Existing census obstacles made worse for rural, immigrant communities

With up to two Illinois congressional seats and $1 billion or more in federal funding on the line if Illinois’ population is not correctly counted in the 2020 census, not-for-profit groups warn that changes to the census format this year could exacerbate an undercount in already hard-to-reach communities. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 16 percent of Illinoisans live in “hard to count,” or HTC, communities, which require greater resources for the Census Bureau to reach and are the most likely to be undercounted.While HTC communities can be found across the state, they each have defining characteristics that make an undercount likely, and include rural, low-income, high-immigrant and homeless populations, as well as children, renters and ethnic or racial minorities.These communities are prevalent in large pockets of Chicago and surrounding Cook County; urban centers around the state, including Peoria, Springfield, Bloomington-Normal, Decatur and Metro East; and more rural areas, especially in southern Illinois, such as Carbondale, Cairo and various southern counties