The U.S. Census Bureau is back to delivering forms to Alaskan households without a physical address. The process begins Wednesday, May 6. The hand delivery of census material originally began March 15, but was discontinued in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic three days later.
The Census Bureau says that the teams delivering the materials have been trained to observe social distancing, and will be following federal health and safety guidelines. The Census Bureau’s temporary field staff will be using government-provided protective equipment as they hand-deliver the census material to households, though one Bethel area census worker says she has not seen any protective equipment yet. The Census expects its field operation to deliver materials to 110,000 households in Alaska.
Information from this count is used in a variety of ways, including as a basis for calculating the funding for various federal and state programs important to rural Alaska.