Rising Number of Foreclosure Homes Affects Census Accuracy

The accuracy of the 2010 census count will be greatly affected by the increasing number of foreclosure homes across the country. U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves explained that many families who have lost their houses to foreclosures have moved in with relatives or friends or have become homeless.

He expects that census questionnaires that will be mailed out next year will land at abandoned and vacant foreclosure homes. Because of this trend, census workers will have to knock on every door to verify if the property is occupied or not and to determine how many people are living in a single roof. And the additional work will cost more money, according to Groves.

According to industry experts, the massive job cuts across the country resulted to over 13 percent of homeowners with delinquent mortgage loans or in some stage of foreclosure. And states badly hit by the foreclosure and unemployment problems are Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada.

Experts are anticipating another wave of foreclosures in 2010 after lenders imposed foreclosure moratorium this year to abate the crisis. But the unabated unemployment problem is the major factor that will drive another flood of foreclosures across the country.

Meanwhile, experts pointed out the need for census workers to focus on families that have lost their homes to foreclosures and are currently living with their relatives or friends. They said that many distressed homeowners may believe that their housing situations are just temporary and eventually, they would get back on their feet and buy a property again. These homeowners still need to be counted even if they only have temporary accommodations.

Meanwhile, census workers are giving attention to counting the number of new homeless, such as families who belonged to the upper-middle class before they got into foreclosures.

The Census Bureau hopes to overcome various challenges by mailing replacement forms and bilingual forms to areas dominated by Spanish-speaking families and to use shorter questionnaire. The agency also increased its workforce to expedite identification of areas that the bureau has difficulty counting.

However, industry experts are not sure if the bureau’s efforts to overcome these challenges would help it achieve its target 67 percent rate response. Experts said that many families from foreclosure homes would be reluctant in confessing the total number of people sharing a house.