PDF: Census report on responses
If you didn’t mail back a 2010 census questionnaire, you can expect a knock at your door in the next couple of months.
Beginning today, nearly 635,000 census takers across the nation, including 1,200 in the Chattanooga area, will begin going door to door to collect information from households that have not yet answered the census.
“Our people are trained, and we’re ready to go,” said Karen Alexander, manager of the Chattanooga census office, which oversees six Southeast Tennessee counties. “The bulk of our people will be going out Monday, but we have some people trained and will begin going door to door on Saturday.”
Responses to the mailed 2010 census forms this year were above the levels of the last census in 2000 in every county in the Chattanooga region, limiting the number of workers the Census Bureau must hire. But about one in four households in the area didn’t respond to either of the mailed questionnaires, and their households likely will be visited or called a half-dozen times to try to ensure an accurate count for the survey.