Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Out of Funding
Published in Issue 4 – 2009 of the Alliance for Children & Families Magazine
View or print article PDF
More than 76,000 residents of Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, are estimated to have been missing for nearly a decade.1 They rent apartments, ride public transportation, and send their children to public school. Yet, according to the 2000 census, they don’t exist because they were never counted.
Large, uncounted populations and the communities in which they reside suffer due to an “out of sight, out of mind” situation that permeates throughout most city, state, and federal government systems. It affects everything from funding formulas to where new schools are located.
This situation is not out of sight or out of mind for nonprofit human service organizations and neighborhood centers, however. The residents these organizations commonly serve—children, people of color, low-income residents, immigrants, and other vulnerable members of society—are the same populations that historically are undercounted.
What the undercount has meant for Cook County, including Chicago-area nonprofits, is an estimated $193 million in lost revenue, including for Medicaid, foster care, block grants, and other programs human service organizations often rely on for funding.2 Continue reading.
ENDNOTES
1. The U.S. Census Monitoring Board provides state-by-state information about how many people were undercounted in 2000.
2. Information about the undercount’s effect on federal funding is available from the U.S. Census Monitoring Board.
