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LIFE IN THE BIG CITY: WHAT IS CENSUS DATA

TELLING US ABOUT URBAN AMERICA? ARE

POLICYMAKERS REALLY LISTENING?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERALISM

AND THE CENSUS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

MAY 10, 2005

Serial No. 109–86

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERALISM AND THE CENSUS

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio, Chairman

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

——— ———

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

JOHN CUADERES, Staff Director

URSULA WOJCIECHOWSKI, Professional Staff Member

JULIANA FRENCH, Clerk

DAVID MCMILLEN, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on May 10, 2005 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Kincannon, Charles Louis, Director, U.S. Census Bureau; and Thomas

M. Dowd, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, accompanied by Tony Dais,

Chief, Office of Employment Services, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor ..................................................... 6

Dowd, Thomas M. ...................................................................................... 15

Kincannon, Charles Louis ........................................................................ 6

Morial, Marc, president, National Urban League; Paul Farmer, executive

director and CEO, American Planning Association/American Institute

of Certified Planners; Mitchell Silver, deputy director, long range planning, D.C. Office of Planning, accompanied by Barry Miller, associate

director, ‘‘Comprehensive Plan’’, D.C. Office of Planning; and Audrey

Singer, immigration fellow, metropolitan policy, the Brookings Institution ................................................................................................................. 34

Farmer, Paul .............................................................................................. 40

Morial, Marc .............................................................................................. 34

Silver, Mitchell .......................................................................................... 56

Singer, Audrey ........................................................................................... 85

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Dowd, Thomas M., Deputy Assistant Secretary, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 18

Farmer, Paul, executive director and CEO, American Planning Association/American Institute of Certified Planners, prepared statement of ..... 42

Kincannon, Charles Louis, Director, U.S. Census Bureau, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 8

Morial, Marc, president, National Urban League, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 37

Silver, Mitchell, deputy director, long range planning, D.C. Office of Planning, prepared statement of ......................................................................... 59

Singer, Audrey, immigration fellow, metropolitan policy, the Brookings

Institution, prepared statement of .............................................................. 87

Turner, Hon. Michael R., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Ohio, prepared statement of .................................................................... 3

(1)

LIFE IN THE BIG CITY: WHAT IS CENSUS

DATA TELLING US ABOUT URBAN AMERICA? ARE POLICYMAKERS REALLY LISTENING?

TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERALISM AND THE CENSUS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Michael R. Turner

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Turner, Shays, and Dent.

Staff present: John Cuaderes, staff director; Ursula

Wojciechowski, professional staff member; Juliana French, clerk;

Neil Siefring, Representative Turner’s legislative director; Peter

Neville, fellow; David McMillen, minority professional staff member; and Cecelia Morton, minority office manager.

Mr. TURNER. This hearing on the Subcommittee on Federalism

and the Census will come to order.

Welcome to the subcommittee’s oversight hearing entitled, ‘‘Life

in the Big City: What is Census Data Telling Us About Urban

America? Are Policymakers Really Listening?’’ The subcommittee

will review Census Bureau surveys that collect demographic and

economic data pertaining to urban areas and how that data is applying to urban planning.

Federal, State and local policymakers are faced with the

daunting task of delivering various programs and services to the

citizens they represent. County and city departments need to zone

for new residences, develop new public works projects, plan transportation infrastructures, ensure health care services, and locate

new schools. As a former mayor, I recognize the challenges American cities face today.

Metropolitan areas, including those with low population growth,

are rapidly changing in their demographic composition. In most cities, ethnic profiles are shifting, poverty is becoming more decentralized, the suburbs are aging, and commutes are lengthening. Accurate demographic and economic data are necessary to understand

local trends so that policymakers can adequately manage and plan

the various services they offer. The social welfare of our citizens

rests on large part on the ability of government officials, as well

as public interest groups and local communities, to meet these

challenges with informed policies. How and to what degree policyVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:49 Nov 18, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24298.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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makers apply census data determines how effective the programs

are. Further, coordination among neighborhoods, cities, counties,

and regions promises smart financing, successful planning, smooth

adjustments to change, and fewer challenges in the future. Undeniably, those that utilize the information provided by the Census Bureau will outperform those who rely on guesswork.

Proper urban planning involves consideration of the area’s economic base and population demographics. The Census Bureau provides such essential information through periodic censuses and ongoing surveys. The new American Community Survey [ACS], provides long-form characteristic data annually. Additionally, the Bureau is developing new data products to support the decisionmakers through the Longitudinal Employer/Household Dynamics

Program, which produces regularly updated workforce job and location indicators for each partner State.

I am eager to hear from our first panel about these programs.

We welcome remarks from the Honorable Charles Louis

Kincannon, Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, and Deputy Assistant Secretary Thomas Dowd of the Employment and Training Administration at the U.S. Department of Labor.

Our second panel of witnesses fully recognizes and will discuss

the importance of census data for near and long-term planning.

First, we will hear from Mr. Marc Morial, president of the National

Urban League; second, we will hear from Mr. Paul Farmer, the executive director and chief executive officer of the American Institute of Certified Planners and the American Planning Association;

and, third, we will hear from Mr. Mitchell Silver, the deputy director of long-range planning in the District of Columbia’s Office of

Planning. Finally, we will hear from Dr. Audrey Singer, a fellow

that focuses on immigration issues at the Center on Urban and

Metropolitan Policy of the Brookings Institute.

I look forward to the expert testimony and our distinguished

panel of witnesses today. I want to thank you for your time, and

I appreciate the efforts that you are putting forward to participate

today.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Michael R. Turner follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. I would like to now yield to Mr. Shays for any comments.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding

these hearings.

I think that it is very clear, at least in my part of the country,

that we are seeing folks consider moving back into our urban

areas. It is very exciting. And they are coming back because that

is where you are starting to see restaurants open up, you are seeing cultural activities expanded.

I had a young woman in a more suburban rural part of my district who is a reporter for a newspaper. I asked her where she

lived; and she said, I live in Stanford, which was the opposite end

of my district. Now, the district is only 35 miles, but still it is the

opposite end. And I said, why are you there? She said, because

Stanford is a cool place. People have moved back. You have the theater. You have the arts. You have lots of restaurants and a lot of

young kids, frankly, who are having a great time at night, and

older folks as well.

I would also just comment that you have a wonderful panel of

witnesses, and I thank them all for participating. I would say to

those who are in the panel and to the audience that the chairman

of this committee has done an extraordinary job to get this Republican Congress to start to focus in on urban areas and what’s happening in our cities. And he has not only the ear of the Speaker

but he has the ear of the other leadership and he has the respect

of all our colleagues. He’s done in just a short period of time what

I hoped would have happened years ago, and I congratulate him,

and I just think that it’s terrific that you all are here for this hearing.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

We will now start with the witnesses. Each witness has kindly

prepared written testimony which will be included in the record of

this hearing. Witnesses will notice that there is a timer with a

light at the witness table. The green light indicates that you will

begin your prepared remarks, and the red light indicates that your

time has expired.

It is the policy of this committee that all witnesses be sworn in

before they testify, so if you would please rise and raise your right

hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TURNER. Let the record show that all witnesses responded in

the affirmative.

Mr. Kincannon, we are going to begin with you.

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STATEMENTS OF CHARLES LOUIS KINCANNON, DIRECTOR,

U.S. CENSUS BUREAU; AND THOMAS M. DOWD, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY, EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, ACCOMPANIED BY

TONY DAIS, CHIEF, OFFICE OF EMPLOYMENT SERVICES, EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

STATEMENT OF CHARLES LOUIS KINCANNON

Mr. KINCANNON. Good morning and thank you, Mr. Chairman. I

want to thank you and Mr. Shays and Ranking Member Clay and

the whole Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census for the opportunity to testify this morning.

The Census Bureau provides comprehensive and in-depth statistics for cities and communities throughout the United States. The

2010 Decennial Census Program includes the 2010 Census and the

American Community Survey, and it is the foundation for the Nation’s data infrastructure and the principle denominator of our population statistics.

Data from the decennial census are used to detect potential opportunities for social and economic development, and particularly

this is true in urban areas. These data are a rich, consistent source

of information that may be used with other information including

the economic census. By using data from both the economic census

and the decennial census, an entrepreneur, a business owner, a

municipal government can provide a profile with rich detail to encourage investors.

In addition to the decennial and economic census, the Census

Bureau also collects other data, providing information about a

range of topics from public finances to housing conditions. With

these surveys, cities can assess their performance in key policy

areas such as housing and education against other cities in their

State as well as the Nation. Yet we also know that city planners

are facing increasing demands for more timely data to respond to

rapidly changing needs.

The Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program

[LEHD] as we refer to it, will help cities and communities as they

confront 21st century economic and social needs. LEHD is based on

a voluntary partnership between State labor market information

agencies and the Federal Government. Currently, 38 States have

entered into partnerships and 27 States are actually operational in

the program; and an agreement with the State of Ohio, I am happy

to report, is in the works.

In addition, the Census Bureau is also working with Federal

agencies, most notably the Department of Labor’s Employment and

Training Administration and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Without such cooperation we would not be able to report on our successes to date. The States supply administrative records. The Census Bureau merges these records with demographic data to produce

key labor market measures such as employment, hiring, separations, job gains and losses, turnover, and earnings over time by industry, age, gender, and county. These Quarterly Workforce Indicators measure the performance of the local economy and answer

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questions such as what are the local high-growth and high-demand

industries?

In addition to the Quarterly Workforce Indicators and other local

labor market information, the Census Bureau is working with several States as it develops a pilot Local Labor Market Mapping program funded by the Employment and Training Administration. The

mapping tool will show where workers live, their workplace destinations, transit corridors, schools and day care centers, and how

different industries are represented within a particular location.

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, and we think these

maps are a powerful planning asset that can literally show the relationship between jobs and workers, where they work and where

they live, the need for better transportation routes, and many other

facets of a rapidly changing economy. The mapping tool, along with

the Quarterly Workforce Indicators and other local workforce information from LEHD, supports a range of policy and decisionmaking

needs as no other data product has. Workforce Investment Boards,

local planners, Federal agencies, and other analysts are using

LEHD data now to determine how local economies are being redirected and reinventing, and how the local workforce is responding

to these changes.

The LEHD program will provide accurate and timely data that

will empower local decisionmaking and improve the quality of services and opportunities for millions of Americans.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and I look forward to answering your

questions.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kincannon follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Dowd.

STATEMENT OF THOMAS M. DOWD

Mr. DOWD. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to have the opportunity

to testify regarding the Employment and Training Administration’s

experience using census data. ETA views census data as a vital tool

in many aspects of our work, such as in, one, formula funding and

State planning; two, workforce and economic development planning; three, research and evaluation; and, four, targeted population

initiatives.

At ETA, we strive to understand the labor market and its relationship to the American economy and facilitate the preparation of

American workers for the jobs of the 21st century. With a $10.6 billion request for fiscal year 2006, ETA is committed to administering programs that have at their core the goals of enhanced employment opportunities and business prosperity. These programs include those authorized by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998

[WIA], trade adjustment assistance, unemployment insurance, and

apprenticeship programs.

It is important to note that WIA attempted an overhaul of the

Nation’s public workforce investment system, and in the past 5

years we have made good progress toward that end. The administration has proposed significant reforms to further improve WIA by

increasing flexibility, reducing overhead, and strengthening the

One-Stop Career Center System, among others.

The funding and governance provisions of WIA provide the basic

framework for the overall public workforce investment system and

the basis for planning WIA services at the State or local level. This

planning is dependent upon updated population data information

for effective management, increased accountability, and better results.

WIA requires that decennial census data be used as the basis for

factors relating to disadvantaged adults and disadvantaged youth

in the statutory formula used by the DOL to distribute adult and

youth activity program funding among States and used by States

to distribute funding among local workforce investment areas.

Decennial census data is also used to determine the funding levels among WIA Native American Comprehensive Services and Supplemental Youth Service programs and partially to distribute funds

among WIA National Farmworker Job Training programs as well.

ETA also relies on annual population estimates produced by the

Census Bureau as part of the statutory formula used to distribute

funding among States for the Senior Community Service Employment program.

Under title 1 of WIA, Governors are required to submit a strategic 5-year State plan in order to receive funding under the WIA

Adult, Youth, Dislocated Worker, and the Wagner-Peyser programs. As a foundation for these strategic plans, States are encouraged to provide a detailed analysis of the State’s economy, the

labor pool, and the labor market context, using a variety of data

elements from Census Bureau data and supplemental labor market

reports.

ETA is leading an effort to encourage States and local communities to ensure that their workforce systems are demand driven.

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Meeting the demands of business requires a solid knowledge of

workforce and demographic trends. Therefore, census data is a key

for States and local areas, assisting them in economic planning,

program management, and performance accountability.

The Census Bureau’s Longitudial-Employer Household Dynamic,

LEHD, program, which the director mentioned, for which the President has requested funding for fiscal year 2006 has as its cornerstone the Local Employment Dynamics initiative, LED. The LED

initiative is a partnership between the Census Bureau and 38

States, representing more than 80 percent of a population of the

U.S. Partner States supply quarterly unemployment insurance

worker and business records and State administrative records to

the Census Bureau, which in turn generates quarterly local workforce-related data. This new data helps local policymakers, workforce investment boards, job seekers, education and training institutions and employers better understand labor markets at the

State, county, and metropolitan area levels in order to make informed decisions.

As part of this LED initiative with ETA funding support, the

Census Bureau is starting a pilot project on dynamic mapping involving 12 States that will demonstrate the geographical relationships between where people live and where they work. This project

has tremendous potential for economic development, the deployment of workforce services, and the design of family and community services.

Market-responsive Education and Employment Training System

[MEETS], is another DOL initiative that uses official industry classifications and Census Bureau LED Quarterly Workforce Indicators

to define and analyze employment dynamics and target industries.

The Census Bureau offers diverse data of high quality which

ETA relies on for research and evaluation purposes. Currently,

ETA has an interagency agreement with the Census Bureau to

support the development and administration of a supplement to the

Current Population Survey to address unemployment insurance

issues, particularly how unemployed individuals utilize the UI benefits system.

One initiative that has been very successful in leveraging the

power of census data to better implement its objectives is the Limited English Proficiency [LEP], census data project. ETA worked

with the Census Bureau to acquire specific data on LEP populations. This specialized information helped States and local areas

determine the size, primary languages, and characteristics of the

LEP population in their area and enhance their level of responsibility for providing meaningful access to workforce services.

ETA also relies on specialized population reports developed by

the Census Bureau to formulate policies and initiatives around

other special populations that more and more are becoming integral parts of the labor force. Reports on older workers, Hispanics,

immigrants, and Asian Americans form the foundation for the development of workforce policies and initiatives that contribute to

ensuring that America’s labor force remains competitive in the 21st

century.

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Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony; and, again, I appreciate an opportunity to appear before you this morning and this

committee. And I am prepared to respond, along with my colleague

here, to any of your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Dowd follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Thank you both.

I have several questions both about the methodology that you approach and how your two agencies work together, the relationship

between the data and your administrative processes in State and

local governments. But I wanted to start first with a topic that goes

to the title of the hearing and really what we are seeing as urban

trends, and I brought with me the two local newspapers from my

district on Friday April 15th that is about the census data that was

released. This headline in the Cincinnati Enquirer is ‘‘Suburbs

Boom But Core Shrinks,’’ and then the other one in the Dayton

Daily News is ‘‘Population Migration: Ohio’s Metropolitan Counties

are Experiencing Population Migration.’’

In fact, the Census Bureau spokesperson says that one of the

things we’ve certainly observed is the rapid growth in the so-called

ex-urban counties, Census Bureau Spokesperson Robert Bernstein

said of counties that are fast developing outside of an urban core.

They are among the leaders of our list of fastest-growing counties.

And the Cincinnati Enquirer indicates that one of the counties,

Warren County, OH, is among the U.S. leaders in population

growth. Warren County is in my district.

And then the Dayton Daily News, which is the other paper, reports Dayton is having the decline in overall population of the

urban core. Both reflect the changes that we are seeing throughout

Ohio. The migration of population in areas where we are not seeing

population growth results in some winners and some losers and a

weakening of our tax base that sometimes supports our poverty

intervention programs and our ability to deliver social services.

Over a period of time, migration and development of areas that are

the ex-urban counties are going to have an interesting impact on

our ability to look at urban redevelopment.

Both from a labor statistics perspective and from a Census Bureau perspective, I would ask if you would speak just a moment

about the issue of development of ex-urban counties and what you

are seeing both in job migration and population migration. Mr.

Kincannon.

Mr. KINCANNON. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an interesting phenomenon and a very complex phenomenon.

I live in what was once an ex-urban county, Loudon County. It

feels to me as though it is beyond being ex-urban, even though it

is some distance from the core. But as population has shifted to

outlying counties, as people seek affordable housing and the kind

of lifestyle that they wish to lead, then that also means that job

centers grow as a consequence of that. That has certainly been the

case in Loudon County.

Twenty years ago, it was a bedroom suburb, but in the last 20

years some important centers of employment have developed there.

And as I am sure you have done many times, going out the Dulles

corridor, the former roadway through farmland has become an artery going past major employers that are significant in the entire

metropolitan area, both in Fairfax County and in Loudon County.

Now I spend my weekdays in the District of Columbia, and I observe that neighborhoods have gone, in my lifetime in this area,

through various changes. What I observe happening in some neighborhoods now is quite a change in the population. People making

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a lifestyle choice, don’t want to commute 40 miles into a job in the

urban core. They have a job that they like in the urban core or

sometimes even in the suburbs, but prefer the life of the city.

As Representative Shays said, the opportunities for entertainment, for social life and so on are appreciated now in the cities

more than they were perhaps 25 or 30 years ago. So there is another turnover of population happening in core cities.

I have seen some of it happening in Dayton as well, although I

am not as close an observer of Dayton as I am in Washington. But

the converting of old office buildings or retail space into lofts or

other kinds of condominium has made a big difference in Washington as it has in Dayton, and the downscaling of the intensity of

housing in some cases in Washington neighborhoods where housing

had been converted from single-family to multi-unit in some cases

now are being converted back to single families. So that change is

quite interesting and makes a positive figure for urban cores as

well as for ex-urban counties.

What remains to be coped with in many cases is transportation.

Still, people choose their jobs on one basis and their residence on

another basis. And getting them from point to point requires sustained commitment of the public sector to make sensible investments in productive and efficient transportation.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Mr. Dowd.

Mr. DOWD. Yes, thank you.

From a labor perspective, it is kind of interesting. Just right here

in our own local commuter shed, like many of us commuting into

the District from Maryland and Virginia, but you might note there

is also a population commuting the other direction, going out to

work in our neighborhoods. And it is interesting, that is, from a

labor perspective again, we hear and see where older workers now

reaching retirement want to scale down from their homes out in

the ex-burbs. They want to move back into a more urban setting

where they have easy access to culture and good dining and all the

things that they want to enjoy in their retirement years and not

have to cut the lawn and take care of those things as well.

So you have that phenomena going on; and we want to look at,

well, how do we in fact then understand those demographics? Because that older worker population is potentially the new workforce

in some of these urban areas that are returning back into urban

areas.

So our interests, and particularly in working with State and

locals, is ensuring that they have the right data in order to be able

to understand the demographics both in terms of the job skills required by the employers so they can in fact bring the three components together that we think are essential: education, economic development, and employment training—the three Es, the power of

three Es, E-cubed we call it—so that you can use the energy of all

three of those to more effectively understand this dynamic in terms

of that commuter shed and which way it is going and who is involved in that flow so we can properly train them and then have

a prosperous economy continue to take place.

Mr. TURNER. We are seeing in southwest Ohio there is a trend

of commute between and sharing of jobs and economy between

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Dayton and Cincinnati that perhaps has not been at the level that

it is now. The commute between Dayton and Cincinnati is 30 to 45

minutes, which, I tell many people in southwest Ohio, is, in D.C.,

the commute over a bridge. So, in Ohio, people are able to spread

out over a much greater geographic area.

Mr. Kincannon, the news articles that I just referenced were

talking about the census data as it looked to county populations.

And my understanding is that your annual estimates don’t break

down further beyond the county level. Is that correct? Or to what

extent is it applied to smaller governmental units or territories?

Mr. KINCANNON. We make every year estimates at the national,

State, and county level based principally on administrative records

about births, deaths, and net migration, internal and international.

Below the county level, we do make estimates for functioning local

governmental units, but the administrative records do not well support that process. So we use housing unit basis as estimating, carrying down the county population, which is the controlled total, to

local areas. That’s not as robust a method, but it is the main option

open to us. So we use the latest information about housing units

from the last census, corrected by new construction, demolition, vacancy information, and the density of population available either

from the last census or from the average household size. And eventually, as the ACS becomes available for smaller areas, we will

have that information about household size, and that will be used

to carry down—continue to carry down estimates for subcounty

areas.

Mr. TURNER. My next question, if you could just embellish a bit

the road you were going down, which is the description of how you

come up with those annual estimates. You and I had a discussion

where I was looking at the estimates of the Census Bureau and

trying to disprove them by looking to actual water shutoffs within

the city of Dayton to look for population and in fact was unable to

substantiate the estimates that the Census Bureau was producing,

which in fact turned out to be very accurate when the census for

2000 was complete. Could you speak a little bit more about that

process that you go through in putting those estimates together?

Mr. KINCANNON. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

I won’t go more into the procedure, unless you desire that I do

so. I can go a little bit further but not too far into the techniques

used by the Census Bureau. But the process has other and broader

components that are quite important.

There is a Federal, State cooperative program on population estimates where each Governor, and in the case of D.C. the Mayor of

the District of Columbia, designates people to serve in this program. And we meet twice a year regularly, discuss what’s going on,

get new information from the localities, the States and the counties

and try to make sure that we have a good mutual communication.

When we do make an estimate, whether it is at the county or the

local government level, if there is disagreement by the locality,

there is a process or procedure by which the highest elected official

or the highest executive official of that jurisdiction can write to the

Census Bureau. We put a time of 180 days or something, a scope

to challenge that, and then submit information as the basis for that

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challenge. And we will review that together with the local officials

to see if we can make corrections.

Mrs. Maloney at the last hearing brought up the fact that New

York City challenged the last estimate, and we agreed to a correction based on the data they submitted of an additional 23,000 persons. I still think an error of 23,000 persons out of 8 million is a

pretty good record. And if the local officials couldn’t do a better job

of estimating, I would be very surprised. But that process is alive

and well and much in use. So that’s an important way to get the

feedback on it.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Dowd, you talked in terms of requiring local

governments, State, counties in their processes with the Workforce

Investment Act to utilize census data as they go forward with their

planning processes. Are you seeing gaps in data? You have been

very active in working with the Census Bureau, in addition to providing funding and advocating for what your needs are. But do you

currently see gaps in the types of data that would be most helpful

in planning for local communities?

Mr. DOWD. It’s kind of interesting in that there is actually a lot

of data. And I always like to say, even though my colleague might

not find this very amusing, that data is the plural of anecdote. So

the fact of the matter is there’s lots of it, and I’m not sure we always use it very effectively and understand through the analysis

what exactly is going on. The one thing we’re trying to encourage

State and locals to do a better job of is to be able to make databased decisionmaking predicated on good analysis and labor market information.

One of the things we did is an environmental scan, and I would

be happy to leave this copy with you, if you would like. It can also

be found online at http://www.doleta.gov///programs/pdf/environmental-scan-report-final.pdf. It’s really designed to help the local

and State workforce system examine the variety of workforce information sources. And just taking a quick look here in the front, you

know, we worked with certainly the Department of Labor’s Bureau

of Labor Statistics and the Census, SBA, Education, National Center for Education Statistics, private sources such as Manpower, National Association of Colleges, labor market information from all

the States, economic development agencies, EDA, and others. So we

try to gather as many of the sources as possible to in fact ensure

that there won’t be gaps and there won’t be points in time and

space with regards to ensuring that you are looking at the full picture.

Now can there be more data? I suppose so. And cut different

ways. But to be perfectly honest, there is a lot of data already

there, and I think it’s, frankly, probably a better use by all of us.

Mr. TURNER. From what you have seen in working with local

communities, can you give us some examples of best practices or

some communities that are using the workforce planning process

and the data effectively?

Mr. DOWD. Yes. One of the things I would like to share with you,

Mr. Chairman, is the President’s High-Growth Job Training Initiative in which we are trying to bring together, as I indicated at the

outset, the local area, and that includes cities, obviously, the economic development of that area, the different entities, and the emVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:49 Nov 18, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24298.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ployment training system through a model approach that looks for

solutions on how to be more effective in using the data to support

a program design that can meet the training needs in that area.

We have had several of them, and I will be happy to leave that information with you as well.

Specifically in the health care field, for example, we have a grant

with the John Hopkins health system that brought that health care

system with the local employment training system along with the

local folks so they could design a program that was really very effective. And I think that’s the key, is having good data, but then

having the right partners put it together and use it together. Usually what you get is one entity coming to you with one proposal

saying, we could use a couple million dollars; and then another one

comes in the other door and says, well, we could use a million and

a half; and then the other one comes a week later and says we

could use $2 million. They’ve never talked to each other, but they

are all coming out of the same community, and some of them are

using the same data and some of them are using different data.

We’ve tried to encourage them to use it together and then to come

together.

Like I said, I would be happy to share with you some very specific projects that we’ve funded I think you will find very interesting.

Mr. TURNER. Excellent.

Mr. Kincannon, when you talk about the Longitudinal-Employer

Household Dynamics program, part of your testimony discussed the

partnership with the States and their quarterly unemployment insurance wage records. Are there other administrative partnering

arrangements that perhaps you don’t have opportunities for that

you see in the future would be helpful, data that is out there that

you think would make both your processes more accurate or easier

that, through expanding those partnerships might assist you?

Mr. KINCANNON. Yes, Chairman. There are a number of areas.

The LEHD—and you can understand why we usually refer to it as

the LEHD—the whole title is an essay practically—it’s a work in

progress. And it does have the unemployment insurance records

now for 38 States, and that’s an important step forward.

But, for example, the Unemployment Insurance Act expressly excludes Federal employees. That’s an important factor in your district. It’s an important factor in the Washington area. And we are

working with the Office of Personnel Management to make sure

that we have the corresponding records that will permit us to show

the same kind of information that’s so critical in those areas.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Dowd, in the Market-responsive Education and

Employment Training System and looking at the Census Bureau’s

LED Quarterly Workforce Indicators, you talk about looking at dynamics in targeted industries. How are those selected? What is

your focus in looking at the industries that you are going to take

a more in-depth look at?

Mr. DOWD. One of the things that we’ve tried to stress very carefully with our State and local partners and our involved public

workforce system is that it’s a fact that employment is generally

local. Most people seek a job and get hired locally. There may be

that person that applies in Philadelphia and gets hired in Los AnVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:49 Nov 18, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24298.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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geles, but for the most part people get hired locally. And so, therefore, it’s very important for workforce developers and working with

economic developers and educators to really understand what’s

going on in their communities today and in the future with regards

to industry. Therefore, we’ve not tried to pick winners and losers.

What we’ve asked the local workforce system to do is to examine

all the data in order to understand what are those high-growth industries, whether they be health care or information and technology, geospatial, automotive, transportation, to examine them so

we can understand and they can understand how they can properly

then adjust their training model, their training plan to in fact really add value to the economic development proposition of making

that community vital. And I think that’s key to what’s continued

to happen, and it happens locally.

Oftentimes, people look to the Federal Government and think

that we somehow have the solution for the whole country, and if

we could just give them a box and they can open it up and put a

kit together, everything would be solved. But we really are far from

that local economy and can’t begin to really understand the nuances and the complexities of where that economy is moving locally, and we want them to be able to understand that. That’s what

it means to be a demand-driven workforce system, to understand

where the economy is today and where it’s headed for tomorrow.

Mr. TURNER. OK. Well, with that, I will conclude my questions

and ask if either of you gentlemen have anything else you want to

add in closing with respect to your subject matter or anything that

the other has commented upon?

Mr. KINCANNON. Mr. Chairman, we did bring a little example of

the map that was developed with ETA’s support funding for 12

States. If that would be of interest to you and you have the time,

we would quickly show that——

Mr. TURNER. Please.

Mr. KINCANNON [continuing]. With a little luck on the technology

side——

Mr. TURNER. Excellent.

Mr. KINCANNON [continuing]. We are participating. We have 12

States. We produced a prototype map for Minnesota to begin with,

and we are now in the process of piloting with the other 11 States,

and I am going to show you one of those States. This is a portion

of Virginia. This is in the city of Richmond, the area of Richmond;

and we can use this map to see where the workers within an area

live. That is, draw a circle around an area of employment and then

see where those workers live. So this is a freehand drawing.

There’s a small circle you can see in there, although the roads

look almost as freehand as the area. For the people who work in

that area, we will next see where they live, and you can see how

widely disbursed they are in the Richmond area. This is not an unusual pattern, but this also will permit looking at vectors of transportation so that it can provide real information to local officials

and to businesses about how they plan what they’re doing to meet

the needs to get workers to jobs and jobs to workers.

That’s the simple part of the demonstration, and it gives you an

idea. If you can actually draw a free-hand circle on a map and get

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this kind of information, it can be very powerful and useful and do

it in a hurry.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Mr. DOWD. I would only add, Mr. Chairman, that again we fully

support the mapping. And one of the reasons is as interesting as

well. Let’s say the employer here in Richmond decides that I don’t

have the right workforce here. I am going to have to go to North

Carolina or to Texas.

Well, the fact of the matter is he can identify what community

colleges he has in this community, how many graduates do they

put out, and are they in fact in the automotive fields, what other

kinds of educational providers are there and training providers?

Begin to see before he moves away that he actually may have resources right there connecting with the education community and

save himself a whole lot of money and not have to pick up and

move. That also helps to eliminate workers’ dislocation.

We may be able to look and see what are the industries here that

are actually on the decline and what is the workforce going to be

able to do in terms of changing and rescaling the industries that

want to come there.

So it is a really complex process, but it can tell us so much. And

I think we are really only beginning to harness this in a really good

way for the public workforce system and for the Nation as a whole.

Mr. TURNER. Well, thank you. I thank you for your time, and I

thank you for the insight of the work that you do and how it is applied and makes a difference in our communities. Thank you.

We will take a 5-minute recess as we set up for our next panel.

[Recess.]

Mr. TURNER. I see you are already standing, so we will come

back to order. I will swear you in, and then we can begin your testimony. So if you would raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TURNER. Let the record show that all witnesses have responded in the affirmative.

This panel consists of the Honorable Marc Morial, the former

mayor of New Orleans, president, National Urban League, currently; Paul Farmer, executive director and CEO, American Planning Association, American Institute of Certified Planners; Mitchell

Silver, deputy director, long range planning, District of Columbia

Office of Planning; and Audrey Singer, immigration fellow, metropolitan policy, Brookings Institution. I thank you all for your time

and for being here.

We will begin with Mayor Morial.

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STATEMENTS OF MARC MORIAL, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL

URBAN LEAGUE; PAUL FARMER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND

CEO, AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION/AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CERTIFIED PLANNERS; MITCHELL SILVER, DEPUTY

DIRECTOR, LONG RANGE PLANNING, D.C. OFFICE OF PLANNING, ACCOMPANIED BY BARRY MILLER, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, ‘‘COMPREHENSIVE PLAN’’, D.C. OFFICE OF PLANNING;

AND AUDREY SINGER, IMMIGRATION FELLOW, METROPOLITAN POLICY, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION

STATEMENT OF MARC MORIAL

Mr. MORIAL. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members

of the committee. I am pleased to be with you. And I certainly want

to thank Congressman Turner, a fellow former mayor, for inviting

me to share my thoughts with you on the importance of the census

data and the work we do at the National Urban League to empower American cities.

I have prepared these written remarks which are going to be obviously placed in the record, so I just wanted to take a few moments to make some general comments about how the Census Bureau and how census data has assisted our work at the National

Urban League and then offer some thoughts about how census data

can be improved and also how it can be better used in the future.

Very importantly, we use the census data in a number of ways.

Crucially, each year we publish this report called the State of Black

America Report. An integral component of this report is an index

that we call the Equality Index. It’s the second year that we’ve

done the Index, and the Index is done in collaboration with an

econometric forecasting firm in Philadelphia called Global Insights.

The Equality Index, which is based substantially on census data,

measures over 100 indicators with respect to Black Americans and

White Americans and compares the two. The idea for the Index is

to give the Nation, to give the people in our organization, to give

people who are concerned a more accurate statistical comparison

between the status of Black Americans and the status of White

Americans in the areas of education, economics, health care, what

we call social justice, and a final category called civic engagement.

The report that we published this year indicates that African

Americans have a status of 73 percent that of White Americans on

the overall index. Crucially and significantly on the economic

index, which I think is one of the most important indexes, the status of Black Americans relative to White Americans is about 57

percent. Without the census data, we would be unable to do this

report. Without the census data, we do not think we could do our

very important work in informing the American public about issues

as it relate to America’s city, as they relate to Americans, African

American and other communities of color, and also to inform the

Nation about the progress we have made and the challenges yet

left to be done in the important area of equality and opportunity.

Second, we use census data on an overall basis as a part of our

work at the National Urban League Policy Institute, which is

headquartered here in the Nation’s Capital. On an ongoing basis

we release such reports as quarterly jobs reports, and we’ve done

a wide variety of work over the years.

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Third, the National Urban League Policy Institute has had the

very special privilege and opportunity to serve as a census information center over the years, to be a part of the effort to disseminate

and receive information about the census for people who we work

for each and every day.

A couple of very important things, comments I would like to

make. No. 1, we applaud and certainly urge this committee and the

Congress to support the American Community Survey, the annual

survey that the Census Bureau has begun to get more up-to-date

information. We think that the ASC is very important and will assist our work in a very significant way. And we think that while

the current survey as it is envisioned is an excellent start, I think

that the Census Bureau should be given the resources, the prodding, and the support to expand that survey so that it includes as

much data as possible on communities large and small. And the

reason is self-evident, that the changing demographics, the trends

of immigration, the movement of people to and away from jobs and

away from communities that may be challenged by job losses are

so fast and rapid that looking at information only every 10 years,

in some cases every 5 years, is not the most effective way for policymakers, planners to have tools and to have information they

need to be effective in the work that they do.

Second, I believe that the Census Bureau and those of us that

understand the importance of census data need to focus more on

what census projections mean about the future of the country and

how projections about the future of the country can inform housing,

transportation, and economic policy at the Federal, State, and local

level.

Let me give you an example. One of the things we’ve been doing

at the National Urban League is talking a lot about the demographic changes that are occurring in the Nation in the first half

of the 20th century. The change in America to a Nation that does

not have a majority ethnic group and what that means for our

economy, what that means for our politics, what that means for the

social health of our Nation, and what challenges are inherent

therein.

It’s been very interesting for me to talk to business leaders

across the Nation who are looking at these demographic trends in

terms of what it means for their marketing, for their merchandising, for their changing consumer mix. I think that more effort must

be given to illuminating the excellent projections that the Census

Bureau promulgates to assist policymakers, to assist business leaders and the like.

My third important point is that census data, while very important, is not easy for the average person or even the average decisionmaker to understand and to manipulate. And while it is sometimes the province of planners, sometimes people may look at the

information as a gobbledygook of statistics and numbers, the fact

of the matter is, is that the information gives us a significant tool

in making important public policy decisions.

So what do I mean? We must support efforts by the Census Bureau, and we need to develop the kind of partnerships necessary

to allow information that the Census Bureau promulgates to be put

into formats and to be communicated in a way that makes sense

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to the average American citizen, makes sense to the average elected official, makes sense to the average business leader. With that,

this very important information will be an even more valuable tool

in decisions that have to be made.

So I’d just add those comments to build on the written testimony

that I provided with the hope that the summation of it is that we

support an expansion of what the Census Bureau is doing, the development of new tools, the development of information which is

more timely, the efforts that need to be undertaken to disseminate

this information most significantly.

And, finally, we think that, for an organization like ours, which

really sought in developing this Index on how we could take a body

of information which was so important and put it in a way that the

average person would understand, that journalists would understand, that would give us a way to talk about it in a fashion that

people could understand but also in way that we think can inform

policymakers.

So, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your time. I would be happy

to answer any questions.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Morial follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Farmer.

STATEMENT OF PAUL FARMER

Mr. FARMER. Good morning, Chairman Turner, Ranking Member

Clay and members of the subcommittee. I am Paul Farmer, executive director of the American Planning Association. Thank you for

holding this important hearing on the changing face of urban

America and the critical role of Federal data in making sound decisions. Mr. Chairman, thank you for your strong leadership in Congress on behalf of urban communities.

I appear today both as CEO of the Nation’s oldest and largest association dedicated to promotion and planning that creates communities of lasting value and as a professional planner in cities as

varied as Pittsburgh, Minneapolis and Eugene, OR.

We live in a time of dramatic change. Cities and regions are

changing more rapidly now than they have in the last 100 years.

APA recently published a report by Virginia Tech professor Arthur

Nelson that includes forecasts about future growth. He projects

that the national population is likely to expand in the next 25

years by over one-third to 375 million. The Nation must now plan

on accommodating 60 million new housing units, 50 billion new

square feet of nonresidential space and another 45 billion square

feet of redeveloped nonresidential space.

Nelson projects that half of the development in 2030 will have

been built since 2000, and $20 trillion will be spent on development. The first three decades of the 21st century will see more

urban development than any comparable period in the Nation’s history.

Among planners, there is a growing recognition that public investment, not based on reliable data and analysis, constitutes a

hidden tax in the form of higher cost of infrastructure. As planners,

we recognize that change is inevitable, but decline is not.

Most major cities in the United States are now growing at a

modest pace, but experiencing enormous change in the composition

of that population at the same time data demands of new technologies have increased. These dual trends place new pressures on

Federal data to provide more detailed localized information upon a

more frequent basis without compromising the overall integrity of

the data. That’s no small challenge.

Obviously the challenges confronting contemporary America are

too great and too complex to rely on data that are updated every

10 years. ACS data will provide planners with a wealth of reliable

data that will lead to better plans, better public participation and

better decisionmaking by local officials.

Rapid advances in planning technologies coinciding with better

community data are leading to new tools that improve the public’s

role in planning. Good data are the hidden backbone of sophisticated geographic information systems and scenario-planning software that allows citizens to literally see the potential impacts of

public policy decisions. Since this data have traditionally been and

today still remain the single most important data resource for planning, it is the gold standard.

Planners using the economic census, LED/LEHD, are linking

shifts in industrial sectors and workforce requirements to economic

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development strategies and decisions on infrastructure and social

services. They are new but vital tools in helping cities and their

surrounding regions address the frequent mismatch in location of

jobs versus the availability of workforce housing.

I know the chairman has a special interest in the promotion of

brownfield redevelopment. I was personally involved in brownfield

redevelopment in Pittsburgh, Minneapolis and in Eugene, and it

was quite gratifying to see the once vibrant steel mills, green mills

and lumber mills all become reborn. The Allegheny, Monongahela,

Ohio, Mississippi and Willamette Rivers all were also reborn and

have become far more productive these days also. Those successes

required plans supported by the public, and those plans required

quality data.

GIS has led to more and better thematic mapping and exploratory spatial analysis with the resulting improvements in public

safety and public health by linking census crime and health data

to computer models and maps.

However, we continue to confront a problem of using data. APA

and the Census Bureau are collaborating on training local government professionals in the use of availabile data, but much more

needs to be done.

APA remains concerned about improving census data collection

mechanisms and avoiding undercounts for urban areas. The issue

remains an important concern, given the number of Federal programs with aid linked to census population counts. APA urges Congress to continue its support of new census data products, full

funding for ACS implementation, and the development of smallerscale data vital to good local public policy decisions. APA also recommends that Congress support continued innovation in Federal

data development and delivery.

Last, I would urge that Congress provide new support for expanding community planning capacity. While GIS systems and scenario planning are becoming more commonplace, there are vast disparities in access to these technologies and training in their use.

Investments in our human capital are critical in an increasingly

competitive world.

Thank you for your leadership and the opportunity to appear before you today here today. Thank you very much.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Farmer follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Silver.

STATEMENT OF MITCHELL SILVER

Mr. SILVER. Good morning, Chairman Turner, members of the

committee. My name is Mitchell Silver, deputy director of longrange planning for the Office of Planning. I am here to testify this

morning on how the District uses census data for planning, policymaking and dissemination; also to discuss past and future trends

for the District and the concerns we have regarding the U.S. Census Bureau’s methodology for the District as it relates to population estimates and projections.

I am also joined by Barry Miller, my associate director of the

comprehensive planning division, who may assist me in any questions that you may ask.

The U.S. Census Bureau established the State Data Center program in the District of Columbia in 1978 to create an effective vehicle for the dissemination of data produced by the Census Bureau

for State and local governments. Users of the census data include

District and Federal agencies, the business community, educational

institutions, academics, the media, religious and neighborhood

groups as well as private citizens.

The main uses of census data include public policy formulation,

research, funding for nonprofits, investment and marketing decisions, maintaining local tax base, geographic information systems,

long-range planning and trend analysis. The Census Bureau provides the District with the vital information on the changes that

have occurred in the city over the past five decades. This information helps the District government develop a basic understanding

of these changes and assists in the development of policies that

best serve District residents.

I want to quickly talk about some of the past trends in the District, which I am sure other cities have experienced the same

throughout the country.

In 1950, the District reached its peak of 802,000. Since 1950,

however, the District’s population has declined to 572,000 in the

year 2000. This represents a 29 percent decline over five decades.

The steepest decline occurred during the 1970’s when the city lost

almost 120,000 residents. While the number of residents dropped

significantly during the 1980’s and 1990’s, the number of households remained relatively constant.

The principal cause of the District’s population decline was a

substantial decline in household size. In 1970, the average D.C.

household contained 2.72 residents. In 2000, the average D.C.

household contained 2.16 residents.

The census data also illustrate that the District’s changing role

within the rapidly changing Washington region. In 1950, D.C. had

46 percent of the region’s population. In 2000, D.C. had 12 percent

of the region’s population.

The District of Columbia is in the process of revising its comprehensive plan for the first time in 20 years. The first step in this

process, completed last year, was to develop a long-range vision for

the city. The tenets of the vision are underpinned by census data

that illustrate stark and widening divides within the city. Despite

the District’s recent prosperity and improved development market,

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the city has become more divided by race, class, education and income over the last 30 years. The fundamental premise of the city’s

vision is that D.C. must grow more inclusively to thrive and succeed.

There is a chart that is before you, which is figure 7A, B and C

in the report. It illustrates the magnitude of this divide. The first

map shows the concentration of poverty in the eastern half of the

city, particularly east of the Anacostia River, and relative affluence

of other areas west of Rock Creek Park. The second map shows the

divides with respect to education; and the third, the correlation between education and employment.

Now, while the District of Columbia uses census data to determine past trends, it relies on its own State Data Center to forecast

future trends. While the Census Bureau uses models for the future

population change based on assumptions about future births,

deaths and domestic and international migration, the District’s

State Data Center uses a fundamentally different approach to estimating its population, emphasizing the total change in population

size since the last census, rather than demographic components of

the change.

In the report on page 21, figure 8, that figure provides a summary of the major changes in population, household employment

the District projects for the next 25 years. These projections show

that the city’s 2005 population is at 577,000, and the District

projects that we will grow by 134,000 by the year 2030. These figures are based on demographic trends and planned and proposed

development projects.

The number of jobs in the city, currently at 742,000, is projected

to grow to 860,000 by the year 2030. This recent growth appears

consistent with national and regional trends, indicating an increased desirability to live in the city.

Now, we have some concerns, as I mentioned, about the Census

Bureau’s methodology. Since 2000, the District of Columbia has

gone on record disputing the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimates in

2002, 2003 and 2004, as well as the recent 2005 to 2030 projections

released in April 2005. For example, in 1996, the Census Bureau

projected the District population would increase by 100,000 residents by 2025. However, last month the U.S. Census Bureau projected that the District population will decrease by 117,000 by

2030. In contrast, the District forecasts that the city population

will increase by 140,000 by 2030.

I will offer you six quick examples to discuss that discrepancy

and why. No. 1, the Census Bureau has historically underestimated D.C.’s population. Their 2,000 data underestimated the District’s population by over 50,000.

Two, the total school enrollment since 2000 has shown a very

slight decline after years of steep decline, but not nearly at the

level suggested by the recent census estimates.

Three, the number of tax filers in the city is relatively stable.

Four, the city has experienced an increase of 7,000 new housing

units in the past 4 years, and the number of units demolished during this time is approximately 2,000, for a net gain of 5,000 units.

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Five, the number of abandoned housing units in the city has declined precipitously since 2000, and the vacancy rate is significantly lower than it was in 2000.

Finally, six, the U.S. Census Bureau’s methodology is designed

for large geographic areas and is based on county-level data. Because D.C. has no counties, there is a high margin for error.

In closing, the District of Columbia’s population appears to be

relatively stable with no significant increase or decrease between

2000 and 2005. Again, we will continue to use our own methodology for forecasting the future, and the Office of Planning continues

to work with the Census Bureau to address these discrepancies in

the figures and to promote estimation methodologies that produce

more precise results at the local level.

Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Silver follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Ms. Singer.

STATEMENT OF AUDREY SINGER

Ms. SINGER. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee,

thank you for inviting me today to testify on census data and demographic change in urban areas.

I am Audrey Singer, immigration fellow at the metropolitan policy program at the Brookings Institution. I will focus my comments

on data about the foreign-born population and how they are used

in research to inform public policy decisions.

My own research has focused on documenting the changing destinations of the foreign-born population, which I will briefly describe as an illustration of what we can learn about immigration

from census data. I will mention as well some of the advantages

and limitations of these data for understanding immigration.

The United States experienced unparalleled immigration in the

1990’s, when the foreign-born population grew by 57 percent. By

2000, nearly one-third of U.S. immigrants lived outside of the traditional settlement States, including in Colorado, Georgia, Nevada

and North Carolina.

Many new metropolitan destination areas experienced rapid

growth of their foreign-born populations between 1980 and 2000.

Atlanta, Dallas, Las Vegas and Charlotte all had increases in their

immigrant populations by more than 500 percent. By contrast,

some places, including New York and Chicago and the District of

Columbia, would have lost population were it not for an influx of

foreign-born residents during those two decades.

In a recent paper I used historical census data to create a typology of six immigrant gateways which charted the changing urban

geography of urban immigration during the 21st century. I will describe three of them. The continuous gateways are places like New

York, San Francisco and Chicago. These are long-established destinations for immigrants, and they continue to receive large numbers of the foreign-born. Post-World War II gateways like Los Angeles, Houston, Miami began attracting immigrants on a large

scale just 50 years ago. And in the Post-world War II gateway, Atlanta, Dallas and Washington, DC, stand out as emerging gateways

with very fast recent immigrant growth.

The growing immigrant population in many new places across

the United States raises questions about the ability of local governments and institutions to aid in the social, economic and political

incorporation of immigrant newcomers into new regions. Local

agencies and nonprofit organizations have an important role in developing and maintaining policies and programs that help immigrants become part of the communities where they live.

Census data can be used to understand local trends, and many

organizations rely on these data to derive information on how

many immigrants reside in their community, which countries they

come from, the period in which they arrived in the United States,

languages spoken and English language proficiency.

Traditionally researchers and others have turned to the longform data from the decennial census to get fairly detailed data on

immigrants. It is the one source that has provided national and

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subnational level data so that researchers can research comparable

data at the State, county and tract levels.

There are other surveys that the Census Bureau maintains; however, none are able to provide the kind of geographic detail that the

decennial census does. The downside of the decennial census is that

it is, in fact, decennial. Once every 10 years users have fresh data,

and for a couple of years everyone is fairly happy. But by 2005, for

example, local decisionmakers are no longer interested in 2000

data. They know that changes are taking place in their communities, and they want up-to-date information that captures the details of those changes.

The American Community Survey [ACS], is a new source that

promises to offer more timely data on the foreign-born. Until the

advent of the ACS, most researchers interested in immigration

trends between censuses looked to other sources to fill in the gaps,

including other official sources as well as other local samples, surveys and estimates.

Once it is fully implemented, the ACS will provide essentially the

same information on the foreign-born on an annual basis, and, in

fact, will replace the decennial census as the primary source for immigration data. However, one drawback of the ACS is that it is

more limited than the decennial census in what it can tell us about

smaller geographic areas, for which 3 and 5-year averages will be

estimated instead of annually.

There are additional challenges with the ASC, including the format in which the data will be published. Users not familiar with

confidence intervals, which are estimates containing a midpoint

bounded by an upper and a lower limit will have to learn to use

them properly.

And there is one other important constraint. The popular summary tables that are produced by the census had few indicators of

economic status tabulated for the foreign-born. While one can access the poverty status of the foreign-born in a specific area, what

is missing is education attainment and income, arguably some of

the most sought-after data for those concerned about the well-being

of this population. Given the importance of understanding the dynamics and the impact of the foreign-born population, many more

summary tables on immigrants could be made available.

Despite the limitations and challenges outlined above, I cannot

underscore the importance of census data for local governments to

develop and maintain practices and programs that help immigrants

become part of the communities in which they live.

Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Singer follows:]

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Mr. TURNER. Again, I appreciate all the preparation that each of

you have undertaken in order to participate in this and the insights that they have provided to us.

Ms. Singer, I have a few questions. I am going to start with you.

With the issue of illegal immigrants in the United States, obviously

we have estimates of the size of the illegal immigrant population

and some understanding of estimates of geographic location. Could

you talk about the methodology of identifying population numbers

and demographics for the illegal population that may be more difficult to capture in data points?

Ms. SINGER. Well, there is a fairly widely used methodology to

develop estimates on the population residing illegally in the United

States. And, in fact, estimates came out in, I think, March or April

of this year, done by Jeffrey Passel at the Pew Hispanic Center,

and that methodology uses census data at its core and estimates

from the foreign-born population—the population that is legally residing in the United States—and then looks at the residual population and does some calculations and estimates, using other

sources of information from census and other sources to make those

estimates.

Mr. TURNER. In your testimony, you talk about the issue of discerning the origin of foreign-born individuals, and you are citing

the issue of African countries and the grouping of Western Africa

or Eastern Africa versus the breakdown of the different countries

that they might have come from. You state that becomes a disadvantage in some of the data. Why is that data important, and

what can it be used for by communities?

Ms. SINGER. OK. I have a very good specific example. Let me

first just explain what I wrote about in my written testimony. I

didn’t mention it in the oral testimony. I am referring to the summary tables that are produced for the decennial census. They are

also produced for the ACS, I believe, in a very similar fashion, and

these take the national origin data—this is the country of birth of

the foreign-born—and collapse some of the countries into regions of

origin, because of the small size of the number of people that are

counted from those countries in certain local areas for confidentiality purposes.

So, for example, in the District of Columbia, and in the metropolitan region where we have a large African immigrant population

that’s over 11 percent of the region’s foreign-born population right

now, one of the largest of any metropolitan areas across the country, there are only six individual countries from Africa that are

identified. And so while we can say how many Ethiopians we have,

we are missing data on some of the other large groups that are important for people to know about this particular population. And

where that comes up specifically is with regard to language needs

and language access.

And the District of Columbia recently passed a language access

act which requires local agencies to serve immigrant populations in

their own languages. And one of the surprises coming out of the

language data is how many French speakers with limited English

proficiency we have. I think that’s due to the fact that we don’t

have the wide range of African countries available to look at.

Mr. TURNER. Very interesting. Very good point.

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I want to turn now to the issue of the pressure of immigrant populations on local governments. One of the sentences in your testimony, you said this new reality of growing immigrant population

in many places across the United States raises questions about the

ability of local governments and institutions to aid in the social,

economic and political incorporation of immigrant newcomers into

your local areas. You go on to say that there is no American process or policy in assisting immigrants, and that falls as a burden to

the local communities.

You talked about the increase that occurred in the 1990’s in the

foreign-born population. My first question along these lines is the

issue of trending. In a previous hearing we had, we were looking

at the trend of immigrants per 1,000 of U.S. population, and we

saw a spike in the 1990’s and toward 2000, but a leveling off so

that the immigrants per 1,000 were about the same types of expression in numbers that we were seeing in 1980’s, 1970’s and

early 1990’s before the spike occurred.

What do you see as far as trending goes; that these local communities that are currently having this influx in this issue to address,

what does it look like for them for the future?

Ms. SINGER. Well, I think, one thing about immigration, which

is a very important thing to remember, is it’s fundamentally a social kind of issue. So immigrants are social, and they go places

where they know people, where they have family members. And so

I would say that they also go, of course, to where there are jobs.

I would say that given that sort of context, looking at these new

places where there has been a recent rapid growth in the immigrant population, that we would expect this to continue into the

next decade or so. I think that as long as people are finding opportunities in these new destination areas, they will continue to go

there because of the kinds of social and family networks that are

in place. Immigrants are drawn to places where there are other immigrants, so this kind of dispersion that we see will probably continues apace into the next decade or two.

Mr. TURNER. You then talk about, which I thought was fascinating, former gateways, emerging gateways and preemerging gateways. And one of the things that I would imagine in the former

gateways—or also of the category you give us of continuous gateways—would be some local expertise on the issue of social issues

in addressing immigrant populations and their assimilation into

the community and the social services or issues that might be

needed, whereas the emerging gateways may not have the historical experience in those processes.

Do you see that pressure? When we were talking about the

CDBG, the Community Development Block Grant, moneys here in

a previous hearing, we heard a significant amount of pressure by

the local communities toward the emerging gateways to respond to

the needs of immigrant populations. I wonder if you could speak on

that for a moment.

Ms. SINGER. Let me say first something about the former gateways. These are places like Detroit and Buffalo and Cleveland that

used to get a lot of immigrants in the early part of the 20th century, and by 2000, they were almost virtually almost all native

born. These places are not really seeing much immigration right

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now, but there is a little bit of an uptick in some of the central cities, of some of the larger cities across the older and the former traditional places in the foreign-born.

So, in fact, if you look at the top 100 cities and their population

change between 1990 and 2000, about one-third of them would

have lost population were it not for immigrants moving into the

central cities. So, in fact, some of these places are developing strategies to attract and recruit and retain the foreign-born in central

cities because they see it as an economic revitalization strategy and

as a way to make good use of available housing and commercial

space. So I think that’s one thing that’s happening.

But in the emerging places, and particularly the preemerging

gateways, and those are places that are really, really fast-growing,

that have virtually no 20th century history of immigration whatsoever, they are kind of being pushed in ways that they have never

been pushed before. And it starts first with language issues and

English language proficiency.

Mr. TURNER. Mr. Morial, in your comments, you indicated that

we see the demographic shifts of our population where there may

be no majority ethnic group. The reports that you are producing on

the state of Black America currently relates to the Black population and the White population. What do you see in trending, as

you look to your reports, that you might use for planning in your

association?

Mr. MORIAL. I would say that to make the report, to add to our

report, we would, one, like to have up-to-date information on the

Nation’s Hispanic and Asian communities, which our researchers

tell me that the same body of information is not available, so that

we can make a fuller comparison and be able to chart the growth,

chart the growth and chart the gaps that exist between the various

population groups here in the United States.

The most compelling thing, I think, about looking at the data

and looking at the comparisons is to look at the economic data and

to some extent the education data, because it would give you a

highlight of what our workforce challenges and economic challenges

are in the next 20 to 25 years.

I was struck by the professor of Virginia Tech’s information,

which indicated this tremendous need for new housing. Obviously

a question that you have been long concerned with is how and

where this housing is going to go, and the fact that much of the

available land may be in former gateways, may be in old industrial

cities that have seen an outmigration.

But having visited some of these fast-growth communities like

Los Angeles, Houston, Miami—I was just out in Las Vegas—the

question really is at what point does the growth in population become far beyond their ability to absorb it, and, therefore, creating

a trend that people are going to be looking to other communities,

and these other communities may then have challenges that they

do not have today.

But the projection, I think, to look at the changing demographics

of the Nation, gives us, I think, a better sense of what we need to

do both from an economic standpoint, from an infrastructure standpoint, from a school standpoint, public and private infrastructure

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standpoint in the next 15, 20, 25 years to be able to keep pace with

these changes.

Mr. TURNER. Well, the Urban League has a great record of community development and personal development initiatives. And

your accomplishment in being a census information center partnership with the Census Bureau is certainly a wonderful one.

I was wondering, in looking at the demographic data that you

then produce on the state of Black America, what other partnerships formed from that, including planning and trading commission

and workforce development and other agencies, that, in your ability

to formulate this data in a compelling way, lead to the ability of

providing services and partnering with other agencies?

Mr. MORIAL. I think the opportunity to partner with other agencies is enormous, because it’s an unmined field and the key thing

with the data is if the data is only used by the experts, and it’s

important that the experts understand the data and utilize the

data.

But there’s another role that the data plays, and our report really is an effort to connect difficult and complex data in a fashion

that a mass audience or a broader audience can understand. I

think we, along with other community-based groups, can play a

more important role in educating the public, educating elected officials, educating business leaders and other community leaders

about census information, about what it means for the future of

local communities.

And to some extent an organization like the National Urban

League and other community-based groups, because of the fact that

we are nonpartisan, because of the fact that we are identified with

communities and issues, we sometimes feel we can speak, be a

mouthpiece, be a megaphone, be a platform for the dissemination

of this data that will sometimes seem less agenda-driven as sometimes people assigned to data, when it comes out of other sorts of

organizations. So I really feel very strongly that we can work much

more closely with other agencies.

I also just had a comment, having, like you, had an opportunity

to run a city, about the undocumented immigrant situation and the

fact that you asked, I think, a very pertinent question, and that is

do communities who are seeing an influx of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, have the tools that they need to be

able to confront, provide services to these communities?

Obviously, if most of these Federal programs are based on census

data, and the census data is undercounting in Washington because

of the methodology, or in other communities because they don’t

count people because of, quote, their lack of documentation, then

it is clear that the tools that the Federal Government has designed—and State governments sort of hitch onto that—are not

going to be adequate, because then the formula is not based on an

accurate count of the people who are in need or the accurate county.

So that is a real structural deficit in the programs, because the

programs are based on census data which, for whatever reason and

whatever case, may undercount people, and it is certainly clear

that the lower people are on the economic scale, the higher the propensity for them to be undercounted or not counted at all.

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So I think that from the standpoint of local governmental officials, you know, the gaps in the census data translate into a diminution in Federal money, State money, and even if census data is

sometimes used for private decisionmaking purposes that are not

always evident on the surface. So I just sort of add that thought.

Mr. TURNER. That is a very good point.

One of the things, when the State of Black America report was

released this year, one of the things that you and I just spoke

about briefly, was just the issue of the parallel experience of urban

America as expressed in the report, and that there are some trends

in urban America that make addressing the state of Black America

and the progress in closing the gap more difficult. There may be

some that are beneficial.

So I would like for you to speak for just a moment about the

trends in urban America that you see that might be problematic in

addressing that gap, or those that you see that are positive trends.

Mr. MORIAL. You know, one of the trends that you see is—certainly in the older cities, which Ms. Singer talked about, the sort

of former gateway communities—is that the people who remain in

the former gateway communities sometimes are the very poor and

the very rich, where you have had an erosion of the working class

and the middle class in a lot of communities, like St. Louis and

Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Buffalo and Detroit, New Orleans,

the city that I led for 8 years. And you can go sort of on and on

through sort of the industrial Rust Belt communities that really

were the economic leaders of the first half of the 20th century. And

these trends, though in older communities, you have the stark contrast in wealth, in educational attainment, in health outcomes that

the community sees.

So, in one place, you ask the question, do you look at the former

gateways, and does it tell you where the country has been; or do

you look at that time former gateways, and it tells you where the

country is going?

In many cases, one of my great concerns about the underdevelopment of former gateways and the underdevelopment of old cities—

and I think the census data from 2000 will sort of affirm this—is

you have a process whereby people are moving to the suburbs, who

have moved to the suburbs, and now you see in communities like

Washington and communities like Atlanta a return of upwardly

mobile people back into the cities, because the economies are better, and the jobs are there, and the culture and the quality of life

is significantly improved.

Many of the older, inner-ring suburbs are beginning to have the

characteristics of cities with deteriorating infrastructure, deteriorating housing. So to some extent it speaks to the need for, you

know, some sensible public policy interventions. While we might

say this is wonderful to see downtown Washington reemerging, it’s

visible, but it isn’t the case for all of Washington. And then now

you have the problems or the issues or the challenges, social and

economic, which are part of Washington now existing in some of

the suburban counties around Washington, just to use this region,

you know, as an illustration.

So, you can’t quickly applaud the rise in downtown—although I

strongly support downtown revitalization as a way of priming the

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economic pump in a community, but if you look at the overall metropolitan area—and I think that is certainly an area where there

has to be more analysis in terms of comparisons—because this sort

of trend of people moving out, now people moving in, doesn’t sometimes yield to an improvement in conditions. It just changes the location of the most difficult social and economic problems. So I think

these are going to be issues.

The final thing I would say is that if you look at the newer communities—I was recently in Phoenix, for example, where the population growth is tremendous, and the economic growth and the new

buildings that are taking place are significant—you do have a large

non-U.S.-born population.

You have a lot of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, moving into that community. One of the things is can the

Census Bureau help us plan and project what these rapid population growths are going to mean for social and economic problems

10 years from now, the schools, the transportation system, the

quality of housing that needs to be built, so that it can sustain or

withstand this rapid growth?

I think the sum and substance of it is that the census data, we

have to put more focus on it, and more attention needs to be paid

to it as a real tool, a real tool for policy development in America’s

urban and metropolitan areas.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you. That was a great transition to Mr. Silver and his report, which I want to compliment you on. It was an

incredibly welldone report and analysis, and it’s the type of report

that communities should look to for their planning purposes, because obviously if you are looking at the data, if you are managing

the data, and you are utilizing it for planning, then you are looking

to manage the future of the community.

There were a few topics that came out of your report, the ones

that happened to be favorites of mine, that the mayor was mentioning. I just wanted to have a brief conversation with you about

those, because I think they are important to highlight. There are

some things that you have said in your report.

Obviously the graphs that you have given us here of a city divided, obviously economic segregation is an important issue that

we need to look at both in census data and in planning. We also

need to look at the issues of building an economic and a tax base

for our urban cores so that not only you have the support for the

social services that are needed for all populations, but also for supporting the infrastructure, where the urban core generally supports

all of the population’s migrations throughout the metro region and

the greater burden. And then there’s the issue of displacement and

gentrification.

I use it to tell people, when people would raise the issue of

gentrification when I was a mayor, that I have never met a gentry,

so I can’t imagine that gentrification occurs.

But in my own community in Dayton, OH, in the neighborhood

which I lived when I served as mayor, it was a neighborhood that

my family had migrated to from Kentucky. It was one of the lowest-income census tracts, if not the lowest census income tract, in

the city. When my wife and I moved into the neighborhood, we purchased the house from an urban pioneer who had gone in and reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:49 Nov 18, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00106 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24298.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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stored the house, a late 1800’s house that had been abandoned in

the 1960’s. It had been converted to a three-family apartment

building. It was then abandoned for a period of 10 years. The gentleman who acquired the house renovated it, returned it back to

single family, and then sold it to us.

That house, I thought, was an interesting study in the demographic shift of cities in that at one point it would have had three

family units in it. It was a single-family house. So at one point our

density was too great, because we didn’t have the housing structures that met the needs of the population that was there, so we

were cannibalizing our single-family houses. They then became

abandoned as the life cycle of the multifamily use of them had

come to an end, and then restored back to single family use. The

neighborhood that I moved into was in the process of rehabilitating

one-third of its abandoned structures. So as new families were

moving into these homes, we did not have the expression of displacement.

Yet you in your report indicate that while most of the new housing built since 2000 consists of apartments and condos designed for

smaller households, this housing is generally not displacing family

housing. I live in the Penn Quarter, and I live in a building that

used to be a department store. So, again, it is not a displacement

of family housing.

Could you talk just a little bit about the issues of having to balance, making certain that you have housing that responds to the

various economic sectors of the communities, the issue of trying to

make certain that you have low and moderate-income housing

that’s available in the community, and its impact on the neighborhoods?

Mr. SILVER. Right. As you know, the issue of gentrification and

displacement comes up often, but the District is approaching new

housing in several ways. One, clearly there are some abandoned

structures that are being rehabilitated and being opened up. In

some cases they are being converted from what was multifamily to

one family. But also the District is also looking at many new sites

that are vacant, new locations for new housing.

So, in those locations we are actually seeing new construction,

mostly of one and two bedrooms, which are going to smaller households. What the District is doing, as the map is indicating, is looking at the housing conditions, and we actually have a policy, as we

move forward we want to grow more inclusively.

As we look east of the river, for example, we are trying to provide

units that provide more housing so we do retain our families, because that household size over time is showing that smaller households are moving into the District; larger households are moving

out. So the way we are trying to balance that is looking for sites

right now that are vacant; that there is currently no housing to,

again, encourage that growth to come in and preserve some of the

older areas to retain some of those families.

So, again, as we move forward, we want to make sure it’s balanced. We are looking at some of the higher-market areas to be

sure how we can actually incorporate more affordable housing.

The District right now is looking at inclusionary zoning. For example, the council has a commission on affordable housing to inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:49 Nov 18, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00107 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24298.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sure that as the District grows, we can deal with some of those

issues of displacement and gentrification.

Mr. TURNER. In reading your report and analysis on the shift in

the demographics of the population of Washington over time, you

identified the loss of a middle class as a significant decline.

On the Federal level we have many policies that encourage low

and moderate-income housing and provide assistance. On the

upper-end scale, many local communities have undertaken policies

to encourage upper-end market rate housing through tax abatement policies and other types of creative financing packages.

What types of housing policies or strategies have you looked at

in trying to address the issue of sustaining a middle class in Washington, DC?

Mr. SILVER. That is a very good question. It is an issue that now

is being discussed and debated intensely at the city council. What

we have recognized is that this is one of the hottest real estate

markets both for office and for residential development. And right

now, the private sector is moving forward in market rate housing

very quickly, and basically very little incentive is needed. Some are

requesting some density increases to provide some of the amenities

the District is seeking, but right now there is very little incentive,

because right now the market in the District is very desirable.

On the other side, however, both the residents and the Mayor,

as well as the council, recognize the need of retaining some of those

families. And you are correct, both larger households and the middle class, some are finding it hard to afford the rents in the District

and are leaving. But we are very concerned about keeping some of

those working class, the firemen, the policemen, the teachers, here

in the District. And we now have a comprehensive housing task

force that is looking to issue a report in the coming months to recommend ways of keeping that very needed population here in the

District.

So, again, just to sum up, the market rate is moving forward

with incentives. We are now looking at what incentives that will

be needed to generate more affordable, lower market-rate housing.

Mr. TURNER. One of the things that you have addressed in your

testimony is undercounting. Mayor Morial first mentioned that the

U.S. Conference of Mayors and the U.S. National League of Cities

frequently tries to address the issue.

Can you give us some insight into what the District has done in

working with the Bureau to try to get an accurate representation

of the population, and where you see some of the greatest difficulties are in getting the accurate data for counting in D.C.?

We do have a relationship with the Census Bureau, and we are

contacted before the numbers come out. We are working with them

again. We met with them as recently—well, at least had a conference call as recently as a month ago to address some of these

concerns.

We don’t know if our concerns are being addressed. We are considering a challenge to the numbers, because the District is a

unique jurisdiction in that it is not a State with a number of counties. But we will continue to work with them to see if they can, in

fact, make those adjustments to this unique jurisdiction that is different than any other State they are dealing with in the country.

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If we feel that we are not satisfied with the way in which they

are conducting those counts, we are considering a challenge to

those numbers, because, again, we believe the District has been

undercounted. Again, the 2000 census actually indicated that,

where they undercounted by 50,000. I don’t know if I can give specific reasons why they are undercounting, but, again, we want to

work with them to try to rectify that problem.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you.

Mr. Farmer, your discussion of the projections of population

growth in the United States and its opportunity for urban areas

was fascinating to me. You were talking about Professor Nelson

and if his estimates are correct that half of all development in 2030

will have been built since 2000, and $20 trillion will be spent on

construction or redevelopment. And he argues that in the first

three decades of the 21st century, we will see more urban development than any comparable period in the Nation’s history.

What, from a planning perspective, should cities and communities be doing to try to capture this? If it’s a wave that’s coming,

they need to be ready, and they don’t want to be in a situation

where they recognize it after the fact and have lost the investment

opportunity and the redevelopment opportunity. What advice would

you have for them?

Mr. FARMER. I agree with you totally. I think there’s an enormous opportunity here. Some cities have already started taking advantage of that. Other cities, unfortunately, haven’t yet started to

take advantage of that. One of the things we are trying to do is

get the word out and show the best practices that are occurring

around the country to other communities.

A lot of it really is demographic-based. When I was planning director of Minneapolis, we had done an analysis—much as the kind

of analysis that Mitch and his colleagues have done—where we

found that over 40 years the entire population loss of the entire

city of Minneapolis could be accounted for by household size decline; that the number of occupied dwelling units was exactly the

same over that period of time.

That was good news to us, because it showed that people really

weren’t necessarily just fleeing the city, they were aging in place.

And households that used to have two or three kids were down to

one parent, or when a parent passed, it was down to one.

And we also found by using census data that in terms of what

was happening in the city, we were seeing two types of households

that were becoming more dominant in the city, single-person

households, where the city had a larger share of those than the

rest of the metropolitan area did, and multiperson and multichildren households, where the city wasn’t just the rich/poor, as the

mayor was pointing out, but it was also this dynamic of small/

large. And part of that related to immigration, coming back to what

Ms. Singer was talking about.

We had a rising Somali population where in one junior high

school alone, we went from several hundred Somali students to 3

years later we had some 1,200 Somali students. And that was not

something that we could pick up very easily other than every September when students showed up in school, because we didn’t have

the small area data that you would really like to have.

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So one of the things that I think could be done in terms of how

do you tie these plans and these opportunities to the issue of data

is that issue of better small area data, more frequent small area

data, so that we can better understand some of those dynamics and

take it to the development community.

In Minneapolis, we were at 200 units a year of new housing

being built over the previous decade. We had to help convince an

industry that they could make money, and there were markets in

the city. Data is one of the ways you do that. The housing industry

in this country is largely reactive. If somebody sees it has been

done 12 times, they figure that they will make money on the 13th.

It’s the path-breaking sorts of things that require a lot work and

a lot of conversations.

So in terms of how can we get more cities to understand these

dynamics, and understand opportunities they now have that perhaps they haven’t had in many, many decades, I think that it’s

kind of telling the stories of success that are out there. It’s working

with Census Bureau and others to put on workshops so that people

better understand how to use the data that is available, and certainly working with Congress to see that kind of more and better

data is continually provided so that we can better react at the local

level to the kind of churning of the population, as I call it, within

the regions, and the churning that is affecting cities and increasingly first-ring suburbs, because the disinvestment the city saw for

so long is now really what is going on in the first-ring suburbs of

this country.

So it is not just sort of a city/suburban issue anymore. It is city,

first ring, second ring, third ring, and earlier in the day you heard

the comment, exurb. Those are all the dynamics we see in the metropolitan areas. And you have seen some of the jobs/housing mismatch that you are familiar with, Dayton, we see all over the country. And, again, I think that good plans can start showing people

opportunities that perhaps they didn’t think existed.

And I think—I characterize good planning as a conversation. It’s

a conversation among political leaders, business leaders, engaged

citizens. Good plans are a story, and they are going to be effective.

It can’t be documents that people have to go read. It has to be a

study because people understand what that story line is, they buy

into it. They invest it accordingly, whether it’s money and their

time and their creativity, because they know they are going to get

paid. That’s why many people make any kind of investment.

So I think you need to keep looking at the good planning that

is going on and infusing it with the information, the data, and to

infuse it with knowledge of what these opportunities really are, because the data—as you say, Arthur Nelson’s work is really, really

kind of interesting and challenging for us—because it suggests that

we are entering a time now that we haven’t seen before, or, for

many regions, they haven’t seen since perhaps there were those

settlement areas of the last century.

So we are very optimistic about some of these possibilities that

we see going on around the country, and I think that as you look

over the next 10 years, you are going to see some real positive

changes in communities. And there are going to be some of those

challenges of gentrification, but I think more often than not it’s not

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going to be a gentrification problem, but the kind of rebirth of communities that we increasingly can point to as a sort of best practice

around the country.

Mr. TURNER. I really appreciated your reference to the issue of

brownfields, because as you look to this country for urban areas to

grow and recapture the population—as we all know, nationally our

local areas and our urban areas have been struggling financially.

So their ability to assist in the redevelopment of their land within

their jurisdiction is limited. And we all know that when we are

talking about urban development, you are talking about redevelopment. That means that there is something else in its way, either

in the issue of assembling land or buildings or abandoned factory

sites and contamination that need to be addressed. And the need

for us to look at the type of assistance to look at urban areas to

take advantage of this next wave, as you mentioned, is very important.

I would love for you to comment further on the issue of

brownfields and issues to see if there are opportunities for urban

areas.

Mr. FARMER. I get really excited when I talk about brownfield

reclamation. As I said in my testimony, it’s really been gratifying

to see brownfields come alive again.

In Minneapolis, we found out every time we cleaned up a

brownfields site, we had developers waiting in line. There was not

a market issue at all. It was the issue of getting over that hurdle

of the cost of cleanup.

And we also talked with the State legislature, and we had some

good support from both sides of the aisle over in St. Paul for our

State programs, because we said, look, these brownfields aren’t

there really because people intentionally did evil things; they did

the wrong things. Those brownfields were there because those companies were doing the best practices at the time. But a lot of the

wealth of the State of Minnesota was created through what were

then those brownfield sites that had then been abandoned.

So we felt that there was a State partnership role in that, and

the State did partner with us on that. And so we were able to start

reclaiming a lot of those sites, many of them in the upper Mississippi area. I had done work for many, many years in Pittsburgh.

I was in Pittsburgh from about 1980 to 1994, and we worked very

hard on steel mill sites and then the heavy metals industry in general, and we found that again as we cleaned up along the

Monongahela River we were able to get a research and technology

park built.

We took a 42-acre island in the Allegheny River that for its entire history had been in very low level kinds of uses. We had to

clean up PCBs. It was a place where cattle were offloaded halfway

between the Chicago stockyards and the New York market because

of Federal laws that required feeding and watering so there

wouldn’t be disease. The cattle would be then slaughtered for the

western Pennsylvania market. So part of our brownfield cleanup

was taking care of cow innards with grass in stomachs and wonderful things like that. I could get very graphic on this.

But every community has their own brownfield stories. And,

again, I suggest that in the vast majority of cases it wasn’t malfeaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:49 Nov 18, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00111 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24298.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sance of any type that created those brownfields. And you kind of

get beyond that and you get very pragmatic and say, OK, roll up

our sleeves and let’s get the work done. Often those brownfield

sites are near waterways that are incredibly desirable today.

Again, Harris Island in Pittsburgh, that island I told you about,

there are people living there. It’s a mixed use community. In 1980,

people said, you know, you folks are crazy, a bunch of planners

dreaming these dreams. You know, no one is ever going to live on

Harris Island. It was rat infested and everything else. But there

was water there. You find those kinds of amenities, and a lot of the

housing built near downtown Minneapolis on brownfield sites is because the downtown itself is such a striking amenity, the cultural

opportunities, the library, things of that nature.

And so I think that brownfield investment is some of the best investments we see, and we appreciate the Federal support, the State

support, and the local support, because every time you develop a

brownfield it means that you are not having to develop a greenfield. Typically those brownfields are going to be developed at a

more intensive level. So it is not just an acre for acre. It’s many

acres per acre.

In Pittsburgh, again, we were able to show that a job in downtown Pittsburgh generated one-ninth of the vehicle miles traveled

of that same job out in a greenfield area. And so there’s some enormous efficiencies. And so, as I said, I am a big supporter of

brownfield reclamation, and I think that’s one of the ways you

bring back cities and, as I mentioned, increasingly, the first-string

suburbs.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you for your enthusiasm on that topic.

I want to thank Mr. Dent for being with us in this hearing, and

also recognize him for questions for panel two.

Mr. DENT. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. And, Mr. Farmer, you just

mentioned you left Pittsburgh I believe in 1994.

Mr. FARMER. Yes, sir.

Mr. DENT. In 1995, the legislature then passed Act II, which is

the model brownfield law for the Nation, and since that time I’m

happy to tell you there are 1,300 sites in Pennsylvania that have

either been remediated or are in the process of being remediated,

and I happen to live in the district that probably has the Nation’s

largest single brownfield site, the old Bethlehem Steel site where

they used to produce a ship a day during the Second World War,

and there was various types of contamination. But that land is

being remediated at a rather quick pace.

Your observation in other parts of the country, how much housing are you seeing on these brownfield sites? I am told by our Secretary of Environmental Protection in Pennsylvania that certain

HUD grants can’t get to the brownfield sites because of, I guess,

there is some thinking that you will somehow be drilling for well

water on a brownfield site as opposed to tapping into a municipal

system. Are you seeing a fair amount of residential development on

these brownfield sites? You sited some mixed use, but I’m mostly

seeing commercial, industrial.

Mr. FARMER. Congressman, it certainly is easier to develop nonresidential on most brownfield sites. You have that additional hurdle to get over. Certainly on Harris Island in Pittsburgh, as I said,

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we have housing there now, and it’s in an area of the island where

there were PCBs that had to be cleaned up. And so it is possible.

In Minneapolis, the railroad area near downtown is a very thriving, largely residential area on brownfield sites. And so we can see

examples around the country. I think that part of that is that you

need to have the entire community come together to understand

the nature of the brownfield site. It’s not just the planners producing the plans with the local officials approving them; it’s the financing industry, for example. And I think it is possible, but it’s a more

substantial hurdle to get over. I think that’s why statistically you

would find, as your observation I believe is correct, that you’d find

more nonresidential than residential. But it’s not impossible and it

is not in general so much more difficult that we couldn’t expect

more of it.

Mr. DENT. How much public investment are you seeing in those

brownfield sites prior to private investment? Obviously our goal is

to draw private investment onto those sites. My observation also

has been that there has been a fair amount of public investment

either for demolition, again remediation costs, and other site-related work. Has that been your experience, too? How much private

money are we drawing in for the actual remediation as opposed to

the development itself?

Mr. FARMER. Another very good question. In most cases, certainly you are going to find that public investment is necessary up

front. I’ve always said that the public needs to be involved in the

difficult projects. The easy projects, the private sector can handle

just fine. And many brownfield projects are difficult projects.

I’m using some old data now, but I know in Pittsburgh, for example, the public investment was about 24 million for a 42-acre island, about half a million an acre. That housing, by the way, we

had market studies done. And after we cleaned the island up, got

some jobs there, did some other kinds of things, we thought we

were ready for housing; and a housing market study back in about

1990 said, well, if you’re lucky and everything breaks your way,

you’re going to get $130,000 a unit for the housing. Instead, Pittsburgh, when they opened that housing in the mid 1990’s, was getting about $240,000, which at that time was a large amount. And

people were buying two units, combining them, and moving in from

the suburbs. So people were spending half a million to live on a site

where people said no one would live there.

Interestingly, Pittsburgh has a wage tax. And my friend who is

still in Pittsburgh said that they have now tracked the return on

the public investment, and the wage tax alone from people now living on the island has repaid the public investment, and all the

property taxes and everything like that are gravy.

So I think that if we had some financing mechanisms that operated as sort of a front-end bank, then you would have a better

chance to make more brownfields get the market to work, get the

repayments made, and let the private sector come in at the point

when you have done enough of the cleanup that they can begin to

make their money. A developer told me years ago, again, on Harris

Island, we were bringing them in in the early 1980’s and saying

we want housing here. He took a look at it, and he said, Mr. Farmer, he said, I’m a developer; I make money developing, not meeting.

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He said, you call me back in 5, 7 years when you are ready. He’s

the guy who did the housing. We called him back in 5 to 7 years.

But, again, I think that the public sector has to do a lot of this

front-end work, but then the private sector, once you get to a point

where they can see the timeframe and they can kind of understand

that it’s not an open-ended checkbook situation, then as we found

in Minneapolis they rush in.

Mr. DENT. Do you think there is a role for the Federal Government in helping with that financing to the extent that, again, since

you left Pennsylvania, not only did we pass the landmark

brownfield laws first in the Nation, but then we passed what’s

called the Keystone Opportunity Zone law that basically allowed

for local jurisdictions to set aside tax free property, usually a dead

spot, often a brownfield site. The municipality and the county

weren’t getting any revenue out of the site to begin with; made

them totally tax free; it was an incentive and helps draw in investment. Now, obviously you get this thing up and running and 12

years later you can start recovering tax revenue.

Do you think there is a way for the Federal Government to help

in financing those types of projects? It could be expensive, but

when you forgive all local and State taxes on a site, it’s quite a bit.

Mr. FARMER. I mean, I think that the Federal partnership is certainly important. As I said, I think it’s Federal, State, local, and

private. It’s that entire partnership, and so I would think that

there is room for kind of additional activity at the Federal level.

Again, these benefits aren’t just local. When you look at the vehicle

miles traveled that I mentioned, that means that there is that

much less oil we import, that means that the balance of payments

is that much more favorable.

So I think there’s room for continued development at the Federal

level of some sort of innovations and the type of financing you are

talking about that you saw back home when you were in the State

legislature.

Mr. DENT. And my final question I guess I will address to Mr.

Silver. Well, the Federal Government addresses some regional

issues like highway systems. How can entities with regional jurisdiction better use the census data to solve their regional problems,

and specifically to Washington, are you actively involved in the

District of Columbia with regional planning with Maryland and

Virginia, for example?

Mr. SILVER. Yes. There is something called the Metropolitan

Washington Council of Governments, and these include municipalities from the counties surrounding, both including the District of

Columbia as well as the surrounding counties in Maryland and Virginia. So, yes, we do look at some of the long-term forecasts for

both population, for growth and for households. There are many

different subcommittees that meet on a regular basis, and we together agree on forecasts and see exactly how the region will be

changing and growing over the next 25 years.

So the answer to that is, yes, we do look at those issues on a regular basis.

Mr. DENT. Not just highway, but you are looking at water issues,

air issues, all sorts of——

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Mr. SILVER. Primarily. Well, those are left to the individual jurisdictions when it comes to water and some other infrastructure

needs. But collectively we look at the population, we look at households, we look at jobs. Each of the jurisdictions begin to look individually at those infrastructure needs, which is why our forecasts

are more important than the projections that the census is putting

out. We can see long-term. For example, we are planning for the

growth of close to 140,000 over the next 25 years. We look also at

the infrastructure capacity of our roadways. But, again, that is

within the jurisdiction. Some jurisdictions do rely on the COG

numbers as they look at, for example, the interconnector in some

of the Maryland counties to see how they are going to handle that

population. So those COG numbers are used for projections. But

collectively, we do not do the regional infrastructure or capacity

analysis that you are alluding to.

Mr. DENT. And then finally, as a person who lives down here a

few days a week and sort of new to Washington, my observation

has been you just look at the traffic outside the city, and it’s unbearable for much of the day. I guess, do you have these discussions, too, about trying to incent individuals living out there to actually reside in the city, to keep people off the roads and to keep

them off the metros? Do you have those kinds of discussions regionally about trying to incent these people who work here to actually

live down here?

Mr. SILVER. Well, clearly the District would enjoy it if everyone

who worked in the District lived in the District. But I’m sure those

are individual decisions. But there are clearly more jobs than people in the District, and we would love them to come and move here

in the District. There is room. But clearly we do look at some of

those issues. And what we are finding is that, as housing becomes

more expensive, there are people looking for housing choices further away. We’re trying to make of course housing more affordable,

more housing for people to move here in the District, and make

sure that we have those metro and transit connections so that people would use public transportation as opposed to driving to work.

Of course, living in the District would be the best of all worlds

because then we have a very good public transit system that people

can use. We are looking to expand that system on a regular basis

to see how we can serve some of those other populations. But of

course we believe the best approach would be to move here in the

District. That would be the best of all worlds.

Mr. DENT. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Dent. I don’t have any other questions, and I would like to ask if any of you have any concluding

remark before we close?

Mr. MORIAL. Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Before we adjourn, I would like to thank our distinguished panel of witnesses for their participation. Oh, you do. Mr.

Silver.

Mr. SILVER. Yes. I first want to thank you for allowing us to

come here and testify. I want to make a clarification. You mentioned our concern about the Census Bureau undercounting. Our

concern really isn’t with undercounting; it is really with underestimating. The estimates are of a huge concern to the District beVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:49 Nov 18, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00115 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\24298.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cause it affects both Federal and State allocations. We really rely

on the census information looking backward. But, again, as I said,

looking forwards, looking forward is a concern of ours because,

again, we are showing different trends. But the estimates base the

Federal and State allocations, and we want to work with them to

look at a different methodology than using for States across the

country. The District of Columbia is very different and we believe

warrants a different method. And so, again, it is not the undercounting, it is the underestimating which has a huge impact to the

District.

Thank you.

Mr. TURNER. Thank you for that distinction.

Again, I want to thank you all for participating and bringing

your expertise here. Certainly one thing that has been shown in

this hearing is that it is important to recognize that there’s many

important uses of the census data. It can teach us about the past

and the present and the future, and what trends we need to plan

for and how we need to look to the future of our communities.

Urban America is experiencing many changes, and the city

should be prepared to meet those challenges now and in the future.

It is important that the Census Bureau continue to provide the

most accurate population counts, demographic data, and economic

information through its periodic censuses and ongoing surveys.

To that end, I plan to introduce legislation that will continue the

Secretary’s authority to conduct the quarterly financial report, the

QFR program, by removing the sunset provision contained in the

authorizing legislation. The Census Bureau has successfully conducted the QFR for one of the most important economic indicator

programs since 1983. It provides timely, accurate data on business

financial conditions for making businesses and investment decisions and for research by government and private sector organizations and individuals. Preserving the QFR ensures the accuracy of

the gross domestic product and flow of funds accounts and is thus

in the Nation’s best interest.

Again, I want to thank the witnesses for all of your time and

preparation, and if there is nothing else for us to address, then we

will be adjourned. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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