The 2020 Census comes to Minnesota and the Twin Cities this month. Starting March 12, the Census Bureau began mailing letters to all known residential addresses.
Almost every residential address in the Twin Cities metro area will receive a letter that invites self-response through a secure website, my2020census.gov, or by phone interview (1-844-330-2020).
Participation and an accurate count are important. The Met Council will use Census counts during the next nine years to estimate annual population for communities in the metro area. The estimates are the official counts for state government purposes, including the distribution of local government aid (LGA), local street aid, and fiscal disparities tax-base sharing.
Exceptional cases will be treated in tailored ways
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People living in institutions and service-based housing will be part of special “group quarters” counts. Institutions and service-based housing include nursing homes and senior care facilities, college dorms, correctional facilities, shelters and transitional housing.
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Minneapolis and Richfield only: Three neighborhoods in Minneapolis and Richfield will receive a first letter in both Spanish and English. The Census Bureau identified these three neighborhoods as having the greatest concentration of Spanish-speaking households.
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St. Paul, Roseville, Shakopee, Prior Lake, Mendota, Newport, and Marine only: A very small number of neighborhoods, with a few hundred addresses total, will receive questionnaires hand-delivered by Census canvassers, rather than by mail. An example is William O’Brien State Park, which has a few residents living in cabins or RVs without street addresses.
Be proactive and complete your Census form or interview
You can complete the internet self-response or the phone interview with or without the letter from the Census Bureau. This is the solution for any household that is somehow missed and does not receive a Census letter. To link your response to where you live — and be marked as “responded” — you must provide one of the following:
If recipients of the first letter do not complete the Census by internet or by phone in March, then there will be subsequent mailings in early April, including a traditional mail-back questionnaire.
All people living in Minnesota must complete the 2020 Census. Addresses that still have not responded by late April will be visited by Census workers conducting in-person interviews.
More information