CLEVELAND, Ohio ― According to the Cuyahoga County Administrator's Office, 61 percent of residents have filled out the census. The county’s administrator Armond Budish says he’d like to see that number much higher. He says the COVID-19 pandemic shows how vital census response is.

“Just recently, the federal government made available a whole lot of money to places around the country to deal with this pandemic. Cuyahoga County got $200 million to help deal with it because we had 500,000 people in the county. If we had 499,000, we would have gotten zero, not one penny. The difference was $200 million. That's what the census does,” Budish said.

Data collected in the 2020 Census will inform the distribution of more than $675 billion in federal funds to states and communities each year.

Budish says a lack of funding is already hitting home for many Cuyahoga County residents. 

“Some of our communities right now, like East Cleveland, Cleveland, or Lakewood, are underrepresented in the census as we are going forward right now. Those communities are some of the communities who need the money the most,” said Budish.

Census proponent Congresswoman Marcia Fudge (D-Cleveland) says the programs and initiatives that residents need and depend on most are supported by census funds, like foster care, care for senior citizens, and so much more.
 
“Think about the allocation to school funding. We talk about our buildings and from that we talk about schools without enough equipment. Those resources come from census. Think about the streets that you drive every day that you wonder why they can't be fixed. It's because the census dollars are not allocated in that way. It determines your representation, how many members of Congress your state has. And it determines how many state representatives and state senators that your area has,” Fudge said.
 
Because of COVID-19 restrictions, census workers have been unable to connect with residents face to face. Simeon Best, with the Cuyahoga County Health and Human Services, says the Census Bureau is determining when they can continue door knocking and how to do it safely. 
 
“We were promoting that and all that came to a halt with the pandemic, and so we're not able to go out due to the social distancing and stay-at-home orders. We're not able to really go out and do that work,” said Best.
 
In the meantime, Best urges residents to mail in paper forms, take five minutes to fill it out online, or call to ensure you and those in your household are counted. He says he’s particularly concerned for those living in hard-to-count communities.
 
“These communities are African American communities, Latinx, homeless populations, children under five. There's funding based on census data that goes to support programs that help people thrive, so to be specific, let's talk about schools, let's talk about lunch programs and breakfast programs for schools, so, if we don't count these people and they're not heard, the policymakers don't know that they're here, then the funding won’t be there for them” Best says.