As I was mentioning in my past blog, Liberty City needs money to improve in many ways, be it on police patrol as officer Luis Cerra said, or in education as Pamela Dukes, said. Liberty City has a difficult reality, and surely some funds can ameliorate that situation. The census, the decennial population count by the federal government, could be a way out.
The 2000 census population of Liberty City was 32,191. Based on this number, the traditional estimate of the census for 2008 would be 32,312. That is 50 percent less than the accurate population of Liberty City for 2008: 48,681.
How do I know this? While looking for the amount of federal funding allocated in Liberty City based on the census, I stumbled across stories on Liberty City repeatedly saying that the problem of Liberty City with the census and the funding that come with it, is that it’s undercounted, a non-surprising fact. But what it was surprising was a meticulous study on Liberty City (and other sectors) by a non-profit organization based in Washington D.C.
The study was successful in getting a more accurate count of Liberty City because they used different methods from the census in counting people. Social Compact “Draws from real-time transactional local market sources like local tax assessment, building permits and utility usage. It also profiles informal, or cash, economy model, integrates data on banking penetration, bill payment patterns and consumer expenditures,” according to their website www.socialcompact.org.
This is where I got the info on the city’s populations among other things.
The study explained how the numbers of the census are what dictate the economic health of a city because it’s what attracts investors and businesses to the city, and obviously the numbers of liberty city are not appealing to investors. That’s why if you go to Liberty City, you will not find a full service grocery store around the corner, as a matter of fact there are 1.4 full service grocers per 10,000 households in Liberty City, with an average distance of 0.57 miles, this means a lot of walking if you don’t have a car, and a lot of miles if you just need a gallon of milk. Same thing happens with banks, with 1.4 banks per 10,000 households, with an average distance of 0.68 miles, which explains why 83 percent of the residents of Liberty City pay all their bills in cash making it hard to have an accurate picture of the city’s economy.
What investors ignore is that there is an immense unmet demand in liberty city.
Because there are not a lot of options in the city, people spend their money in other cities resulting in more than 90 million leakage. The lack of groceries it’s what most affects the economy with a 33.2 million leakage, followed by apparel with 12.4 million and restaurants with 12.2 million.
These numbers above is what is going to help people like Elaine Black, president/ CEO of Liberty City Revitalization Trust, in selling the city as a profitable inversion.
“We are working in bringing investors to the city,” (with the study if Social Compact) said Black.
“However, the numbers of the census are the official data,” said William Porro, special projects administrator. Meaning that no matter if the census is incorrect that is the legitimate data.
But there is a way to appeal this record and that is by The Census Challenge, a program that was established in 2001 in recognition of the impact of possible incongruity, allowing local governments challenge its population estimates. There have been 188 recognized challenges according to Social Compact, including one of Miami Dade in 2009, which recognized 80,500 people that were left out of the original 11-24-09 population estimate (2,398,245) resulting in a more accurate population of 2,478,745.
The why of the undercount of Liberty City has various reasons: multiple families living in one apartment, paying bills in cash, language barriers and the most frequent one: mistrust of government.
What people need to know is that the census is completely independent from the government (not even the president has access to it), and it is sealed for 72 years. Getting counted can only do you good.
The benefits of getting counted, and accurately, is the ultimate desire of any local government because they know that there is more than 400 trillion every then years to be allocated in every city depending on its population. Representation is also in jeopardy when there is a miscount, and as we said investors would overlook communities, making them seem as dying and not with economic prosperity.
Liberty City demands more attention from investors because it has the purchasing power to handle it, and it needs it for it to be a normal city with groceries and banks and restaurants like any other city has.
Let the census speak for you, not against you.
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