Results from the U.S. Census are expected to have big implications for how Angelenos are represented at City Hall. The results are significant for people on LA's predominately Latino Eastside, where the census found a population decline, fueling fears of an undercount. At the same time, the opposite is happening in the West Valley.
In an interview for "LA Times Today," reporter David Zahniser joined host Lisa McRee with what this could mean as the city's 15 districts are redrawn.
Every 10 years, the U.S. Census counts the population across the country, which helps decide what kind of government resources are needed.
"So, if there's not an accurate count, there's an undercount, then areas don't get the resources they should that they deserve under a sort of equal representation. And what happened with Los Angeles is the numbers came in and what they found was that there were several neighborhoods on the Eastside, El Sereno, Boyle Heights, etc., that had decreased. That's going to be an issue because they're going to redraw the boundaries of every district, and every district has to be equal size. And so, they're going to have to change the shapes of each district," said Zahniser.
Before the numbers were released, Zahniser says there was a great deal of fear in some Latino neighborhoods.
"You had the outbreak of COVID right as the count was starting. And then you also had President Trump, who had been looking to try and insert a question about citizenship into the census. That effort wasn't successful, but their academics and demographers both in and outside City Hall feel like that had a chilling effect and then added to this crisis. And the more difficult thing of having less person-to-person contact over the last year is that this is one of the things that drove down the numbers among low-income households, immigrant households, Latino households, and others," Zahniser added.
The West Valley in the San Fernando Valley is experiencing the opposite situation.
"In the West Valley, there are two councilmembers, John Lee and Bob Blumenfield. They have added about 30,000 people. So, you saw big increases in Northridge, Chatsworth and Woodland Hills. And so those areas now have so much population, they almost certainly would need to shed some territory or some population for this to equal out," said Zahniser.
A Redistricting Commission made up of political appointees at City Hall must submit its proposed maps to the City Council on Oct. 29.
"And that has the likelihood of being an extremely political process because what you have on the council right now are some councilmembers who are looking to run for reelection. So, they could end up with districts they never represented. And so, I think they will be looking very closely at what kind of districts they got, and they could change the boundaries further," Zahniser said.
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