Mayor Bloomberg (Marc A. Hermann-Pool/Getty Images)
Reporting Mike Xirinachs
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Local lawmakers announced plans on Sunday to challenge the 2010 Federal Census count of New York City.
“We believe that errors have occurred in putting together the census results for Brooklyn and Queens,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “It seems evident to us that something incongruous happened in the Census count in these two boroughs.”
Dozens of New York’s elected leaders gathered in Jackson Heights – one of the busiest neighborhoods in Queens – to announce that the city will challenge what they believe to be a census undercount, reports WCBS 880′s Mike Xirinachs.
“The numbers are dead wrong,” Senator Charles Schumer said. “The Census Bureau has to go back to the drawing board and fix them.”
New York City stands to lose millions of federal dollars, from health programs for kids to highway funding, if the census numbers are correct, reports CBS 2′s Sonia Rincon.
City and state lawmakers said they will now formally challenge the data.
Mayor Bloomberg indicated that the problem could be census takers counting residences where there was no answer at the door as vacant.
“Anyone who walks the streets knows there is not a lot of empty housing,” he said.
Bloomberg said the biggest undercount seemed to be in immigrant communities.
Senator Schumer said he is asking the Commerce Department to investigate the Census Bureau’s methods. He said their conclusion that the city grew by only about 167,000 people shows they don’t know how to count urban populations.
“They’ve never been good at it, but that’s no reason to short-change New York,” he said.
