2020 Census Hard To Count Map & the Asian American Community

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The 2020 Census could miss millions of immigrants and others who are historically hard to count, affecting everything from seats in Congress to federal funds for education. Because of this, officials and groups from New York to California are using The City University of New York’s interactive Census mapping tool to focus their efforts on neighborhoods that will be the hardest to count. Steven Romalewski, Director of the CUNY Mapping Service, will discuss the Census 2020 Hard To Count Map, how it works, and the efforts by CUNY to ensure a fair and accurate count through the New York City Complete Count Fund, Get Out the Count events, and the CUNY Census Corps.

The Asian American Federation, a recipient of the New York City Complete Count Fund, serves as a Census Information Center (CIC) to facilitate community access to census data, to assist community members with the decennial Census or the American Community Survey, as well as to produce and disseminate demographic profiles of Asian Americans in the region. Howard Shih, Research and Policy Director at the Asian American Federation, will discuss efforts by the New York Asian Pacific American (APA) Complete Count Committee to ensure that everyone within the APA community (where 70% are immigrants), especially those in hard to count tracts, are counted in the 2020 Census.

Author Bio

Presented By:

Steven Romalewski joined the City University of New York in January 2006 to launch and direct the CUNY Mapping Service as a project of the Center for Urban Research at CUNY’s Graduate Center. The Mapping Service engages with foundations, public agencies, businesses, nonprofits, and other CUNY researchers to use spatial information and analysis techniques to develop and execute applied research projects. They specialize in online applications that provide intuitive access to powerful data sets, displayed visually through interactive maps and in other formats.

Romalewski was awarded a Charles H. Revson Fellowship at Columbia University in 1995, and received his MS in urban planning from Columbia in 1998. He also teaches graduate-level GIS courses at Pratt Institute’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment. Prior to joining CUR, Romalewski co-founded and directed the Community Mapping Assistance Project (CMAP) at NYPIRG. During its eight-year history, CMAP enabled dozens of nonprofit, philanthropic, and public service organizations to use computer mapping to visualize data, analyze information geographically, provide services, and otherwise take advantage of the growing power of online mapping systems.


Presented By:

Howard Shih is the Research and Policy Director for the Asian American Federation. Mr. Shih has authored or co-authored a number of reports on Asian Americans, including an analysis of city government funding to social service organizations serving Asian Americans in New York City, Making America Work: Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the Workforce and Business, various profiles of Asian Americans in New York City, and The State of Asian American Children 2014. Mr. Shih has also been published two articles in UCLA’s AAPI Nexus Journal, one on poverty among Asian New Yorkers and one as a co-author comparing Asians in the New York and Los Angeles metro areas.

In addition, Mr. Shih is responsible for the Federation’s Census Information Center (CIC), officially designated by the Census Bureau as a repository of Census data for improving data access to underserved communities. The CIC collaborates with Asian American community-based organizations to effectively utilize data to serve and advocate on behalf of their constituents. Mr. Shih also led the Federation’s 2010 Census outreach initiative to encourage Asian Americans to fully participate in the decennial census.