Census Bureau

Census Bureau officials opened a second office in Baltimore on Tuesday and expect to hire about 1,200 temporary employees to canvass the city and collect demographic data. The office, located at the 205 S. President St., will serve as headquarters for operations on the eastern side of the city. Fernando E. Armstrong, regional director for the Census Bureau, said the federal government has started accepting applications for the jobs and will hire people at the end of March for stints ranging from five weeks to three months, depending on the nature of the work.

One in 9 housing units in the Baltimore region sat empty last year, from well-tended homes for sale to boarded-up shells, according to new estimates from the Census Bureau . That's on the high side but not nearly the highest. The agency measured vacancy for the 75 largest metro areas -- not counting vacation properties shuttered in the off-season -- and says the Baltimore region is in a three-way tie with Chicago and Pittsburgh for the 26th worst rate. (It's 11.6 percent, to be exact.)

If my sister had her way, my niece would never leave home. Thankfully, my 18-year-old niece managed to escape to college this year. But some families are struggling financially and parents and their young adult children are forced to double up. The U.S. Census Bureau today released new data that showed the number of “double-up households” rose by 2 million from 2007 to 21.8 million by spring 2011. As of this spring, 5.9 million people age 25 to 34 lived with their parent's, up from 4.7 million before the recession.

A couple of years ago, Joe and Marlene Everett were 50-something empty nesters with a daughter out on her own and a son away at college. Now, thanks to the weak economy, the Everetts are once again all living under the same roof in Woodbine. It's a bit of a financial strain, admits Marlene Everett, but one the couple has taken on willingly to help kids who don't yet earn enough to live on their own. "We enjoy them being here right now," the 54-year-old mother says. "This is the last time they will live at home before branching out. " More American families are finding themselves in a similar situation, according to the federal government.

Census Bureau officials opened a second office in Baltimore on Tuesday and expect to hire about 1,200 temporary employees to canvass the city and collect demographic data. The office, at 205 S. President St., will serve as headquarters for operations on the eastern side of the city. Fernando E. Armstrong, regional director for the Census Bureau, said the federal government has started accepting applications for the jobs and will hire people at the end of March for stints ranging from five weeks to three months, depending on the nature of the work.

THE CENSUS BUREAU has just issued some myth-shattering figures on homelessness that are giving activists for the homeless more reason than ever to be indignant.The bureau's new figures are based on last year's unique census effort, in which 15,000 census enumerators fanned out across the country to locate homeless people in shelters and on the streets. Though never intending to give a precise head count, the bureau sought to develop an Carl F.Horowitzaccurate profile of the characteristics and needs of America's homeless.

WASHINGTON -- With the debate over reducing the country's welfare rolls focusing renewed attention on the rising birthrate among unwed women, the Census Bureau reports that such births soared by more than 70 percent from 1983 to 1993.According to figures released by the bureau yesterday, 6.3 million children, or 27 percent of all children under the age of 18, lived in 1993 with a single parent who had never married, up from 3.7 million in 1983.The report showed that the annual increase in the number of children born out of wedlock slowed in the 1980s, but it also documented the sharp rise in these kinds of births over the past three decades.

WASHINGTON -- As a people, Americans are living longer, smoking less, spending more money on books, newspapers and magazines. Fewer are owning guns and are less likely to get a divorce. They are even eating more broccoli.These are some of the highlights of the 1994 Statistical Abstract of the United States, a potpourri of factoids compiled by the Census Bureau. The report, published annually since 1878, provides a snapshot of changes in U.S. life over a period of 20 or 30 years or more.Coming in a political season in which candidates of both the left and the right are focusing on America's shortcomings, it is a portrait of a nation that is remarkably healthy.

WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of homeless people in Baltimore were left out of the 1990 population count due to negligence and incompetence by the U.S. Census Bureau, according to homeless advocates in Baltimore who filed a federal suit against the Bush administration yesterday.The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, accuses the Census Bureau of failing even to attempt a complete count of homeless Americans.The resulting undercount will deprive many areas of federal grant money, including money for homelessness programs, that is distributed according to population levels, the plaintiffs contend.

WASHINGTON -- The Census Bureau, stung by questions about the costs and accuracy of its 1990 count, is planning wholesale changes in how it will collect data in the year 2000 and beyond.One change that is expected to be adopted, census officials say, is the use of sophisticated estimates based on surveys to supplement the actual counting -- a volatile issue that was the center of a partisan battle in the last census.The bureau is also considering scrapping the long-form survey that has been used once a decade to gather information as varied as household incomes and how many telephones a particular residence has.In its place, the bureau plans extensive monthly surveys conducted over an entire decade, providing a more timely flow of data.

If my sister had her way, my niece would never leave home. Thankfully, my 18-year-old niece managed to escape to college this year. But some families are struggling financially and parents and their young adult children are forced to double up. The U.S. Census Bureau today released new data that showed the number of “double-up households” rose by 2 million from 2007 to 21.8 million by spring 2011. As of this spring, 5.9 million people age 25 to 34 lived with their parent's, up from 4.7 million before the recession.

Jean and John King, of Laurel; and Carol and Allen Heyne, of Bloomingdale, Ill., announce the engagement of their children, Kimberly King and Matthew Heyne. The bride-to-be is a 2002 graduate of Eleanor Roosevelt High School and a 2006 graduate of the University of Maryland. She is currently employed by theU.S. Census Bureau. A 2009 graduate of the University of Maryland, the future groom is employed byU.S. Department of Homeland Security. A September wedding is planned.

It could have been a historic teaching moment. Instead, President Barack Obama, the most famous mixed-race person in the world, checked off only one race — black — last year on his census form. And in so doing, he missed an opportunity to articulate a more nuanced racial vision for the increasingly diverse country he heads. The president also bucked a trend. Last month, the Census Bureau announced that the number of Americans who identified themselves as being of more than one race in 2010 grew about 32 percent over the last decade.

The Census Bureau is expected to release official numbers Wednesday that will detail how Maryland's population has expanded and shifted in the past decade. The bureau announced Tuesday afternoon that it had shipped the data, which will be used to redraw Maryland's political district lines, to Gov. Martin O'Malley and leaders of the state legislature. Once they have confirmed their receipt of the data, the Census Bureau will release the information on its website. The data will include population counts down to the block level, including information on race, Hispanic ethnicity and home vacancy.

A U.S. Census worker was killed while dropping off a co-worker in Southeast Baltimore last week, according to police and the Census Bureau. Spencer Williams, 22, was found shot June 7 inside his vehicle, which had pulled onto a median in the 1100 block of New Hope Circle, police said. He died Friday morning at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Williams was a crew leader responsible for a group of census takers who are doing follow-up visits at the homes of people who did not mail in their questionnaires by April, a Census Bureau spokeswoman confirmed.

Maryland residents who have not mailed their census forms will be visited by one of the roughly 12,000 census takers who began door-to-door surveying this weekend. Through July 10, the Census Bureau will attempt to conduct the 10-question surveys in person with the estimated 26 percent of Marylanders who did not send back their census forms by the April 16 deadline. The in-person interviews are part of the federally mandated 2010 census count. Census takers began canvassing the state on Saturday, with about 2,500 being deployed to Baltimore City, said Sylvia Ballinger, media specialist for the Census Bureau.

WASHINGTON -- One-seventh of all the towns, counties and cities in the country, and all of its 51 largest cities, have challenged the Census Bureau's counts of their housing units in the hope of increasing their population figures.Given this last opportunity to review and challenge the bureau's preliminary figures before the housing and population counts become final Dec. 31, more than 6,000 jurisdictions have filed objections.The Census Bureau said it could not yet provide a total for the number of missing units claimed by the thousands of communities filing objections.

Baltimore's 66 percent mail-in return rate for census forms exceeds the city's mark in 2000 and represents one of the highest response increases in the nation, according to Census Bureau officials. The Census Bureau will release the final mail-in return number in the fall, but the preliminary figure is 6 percentage points higher than the response from a decade ago, officials said. City officials credit the rise to an aggressive advertising campaign and a coordinated effort among agencies.

For more than two decades, Rico Marzano called prison cells in Jessup and Cumberland his home. But this year, the convicted murderer serving four consecutive life sentences will be recorded as a Baltimore resident, even though he won't step foot in his Frankford neighborhood any time soon. Marzano and thousands of other Maryland inmates are being reclassified under a contentious law approved this month by Gov. Martin O'Malley that alters how prison populations are counted during the once-a-decade census.