(A) Declaration and purpose.
(1) The United States Constitution directs a decennial census count of all persons living in the United States.
(2) Complete, accurate census data is of critical importance to all residents of the city for equal political representation, fair distribution of federal and state funding, and sound planning and investment infrastructure, real estate, business development, and public policy and programming.
(3) During the decennial census, the United States Census Bureau conducts non-response follow-up operations (NRFU), when employees of the United States Census Bureau visit households that have not yet submitted a census form.
(4) Renters and others who live in multi-unit housing structures have historically been at higher risk of being undercounted in the decennial census, with the number of renter households in an area being the most influential variable affecting an area’s census self-response rate; in other words, the more renters in an area, the lower the self-response rate of that area.
(5) The risk of an undercount is compounded in areas with high concentrations of communities that have been consistently undercounted in the past and who are more likely to be renters, including low income households, communities of color, Native American/American Indian communities, immigrants and refugees, and young people.
(6) Multi-unit housing structures can be difficult for Census Bureau employees to enter due to security barriers.
(7) It is critical that Census Bureau employees have access to multi-unit housing structures during the decennial census, so they can reach households that have not yet participated.
(8) 13 U.S.C. § 223 authorizes Census Bureau employees to access “any hotel, apartment house, boarding or lodging house, tenement, or other building.”
(B) Prohibition. It is unlawful for a person, either directly or indirectly, to deny access to an apartment building, dormitory, nursing home, manufactured home park, other multi-unit structure used as a residence, or an area in which one or more single-family dwellings are located on private roadways, to employees of the United States Census Bureau who display current, valid Census Bureau credentials and who are engaged in official census counting operations during the Census Bureau’s standard operational hours of 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. (local time) during the decennial census.
(C) Access and permissions. Census Bureau employees granted access must be permitted to leave census materials in an orderly manner for residents at their doors, except that the manager of a nursing home may direct that the materials be left at a central location within the facility.
(D) Exemptions. This section does not prohibit:
(1) Denial of admittance into a particular apartment, room, manufactured home, or personal residential unit;
(2) Denial of permission to visit certain persons for valid health reasons, in the case of a nursing home or a Registered Housing with Services Establishment providing assisted-living services meeting the requirements of M.S. § 292(1), as it may be amended from time to time;
(3) Limiting visits to a reasonable number of census employees;
(4) Requiring a prior appointment or notification to gain access to the structure; or
(5) Denial of admittance to or expulsion of an individual employee from a multi-unit housing structure for good cause.
(Prior Code, § 150.097) (Ord. 2020-01, passed 3-10-2020)