November 13, 2019 431 PM
MONAHANS — Local leaders and census experts met last Thursday in Monahans for a symposium to discuss the 2020 Census. It’s part of an ongoing effort by local and federal officials to make sure the national 10-year head count gets done right in West Texas. Another meeting is scheduled for today in Midland.
These symposiums are focused on “group quarters,” which can mean anything from college dorms to homeless shelters. It’s anywhere, said Census Regional Technician Emma Moss, “where people that aren’t related live or stay.”
In West Texas, though, group quarters often mean “man camps,” where oilfield workers live in trailers or makeshift housing. Untold numbers of people, and especially young men, have flocked to West Texas in recent years for oil jobs in the Permian Basin and beyond.
The group discussed the challenges of counting the populations of man camps. Reeves County Judge Leo Hung suggested that the owners of man camps should serve as point people for contacting workers. Michael Hernandez, with the workforce housing company Permian Lodging, said census workers should “get them at check-in,” before they have worked long days and arrive home exhausted.
Norma Ayers, a partnership specialist with the U.S. Census Bureau, stressed that census information is confidential and protected — an issue of concern for next year’s census, after the Trump administration tried to add a citizenship question.
“We do not share your information with any agency or anyone else,” she said. “We only collect it for statistical purposes.”
As man camps add new residents to census tracts, they also remove them from the communities those residents might consider home, as The Big Bend Sentinel and Presidio International have previously reported.
Take Presidio. At a meeting in October to discuss the census, Brad Newton, executive director of the Presidio Municipal Development District, pointed out that many Presidio locals find work in the oil hub of Midland-Odessa and may end up getting counted as residents there instead. But Presidio can’t advertise this issue or otherwise try to sway Presidio residents to count themselves in the border city rather than the Permian Basin, he stressed.
Census rules are clear that people are counted wherever they spend they spend a majority of their time. And come April 1, said census worker Norma Ayers, “wherever you are, you will be counted.”
Moss, the census official, was blunt about what the census count could mean in terms of local funding.
“If there is a disaster in this area, federal money that comes in is going to be based on people who live in this area,” she said. “So, we have to count those who don’t have traditional housing.”
