City of Minneapolis, MN 2021 Minneapolis Boards & Commissions, 22 Nov 2021

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From YouTube: November 22, 2021 Redistricting Presentation by State Demographer

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Additional information at
https://lims.minneapolismn.gov

A

The minneapolis redistricting group meeting will now begin.

B

Good afternoon welcome to this live broadcast of our virtual meeting. This meeting includes the remote participation of members as authorized under minnesota statutes, section 13d .021, due to the declared local health pandemic. The city is recording and posting this meeting to the city's website and youtube channel as a means of increasing public access and transparency.

B

This meeting is public and subject to the minnesota open meeting law. My name is barry clegg and I'm the chair of the redistricting group note that, since this meeting is a study session and not a formal meeting and no votes will be taken, we are not taking roll call this evening, I'm I'm happy to have dr susan brower with us this evening, who is the minnesota state demographer and she has graciously agreed to join us to give us a short presentation on minnesota demographic and census overview for minneapolis, 2020 redistricting.

B

So thank you for joining us, dr brower, and please go ahead.

C

Thanks for having me it's good to be here, everyone I will share slides with you.

C

C

All right, you should be able to see what I see now, uh which is my my title slide, um and I cannot see you so if you have a question for me as I'm going, I'm happy to to take them as I go, but I also have time at the end, but you will have to get my attention uh by chiming in since I can't see you at this point, but so I'm going to give you an overview of what we've learned so far from the 2020 census.

C

I'm going to start big kind of where we are with respect to minnesota's growth in the u.s and then zero in on minneapolis and what we know hoping to contextualize it in the overall pattern of growth that we're seeing in minnesota and elsewhere.

C

So what we learned earlier this spring is that minnesota's population is 5.7 million, just over 5.7 million, that the state grew by 7.6 percent over the last decade, which is really pretty good for a midwestern state. If you look out to the east of us on this map, you can see that there are many other states that have lighter colored greens. There wisconsin, for example, which is comparable in size to minnesota, grew by about half as much as we did.

C

Michigan grew by just two percent. The larger state illinois actually lost population, so in general, when you think of our kind of neighborhood of the us uh minnesota did really pretty well for for where it is with respect to comparable states.

C

Now, if you look, for example, to our west, just a little bit still in the midwest, you see that north dakota grew um by more than 15 percent uh south dakota, almost nine percent. um Those uh states had very strong economies as well, and they have very small population sizes. So it's much easier to get to those percentages.

C

um North dakota, just by way of comparison, is about the size of minneapolis and st paul put together, so um their 15 percent is um nowhere near where minnesota grew with respect to the number of people added which for minnesota um was about 400 thousand um other states out to the the west, uh with the very darkest greens and the south uh grew much more rapidly, but we were able to hang on to our eight congressional districts, uh u.s congress congressional districts by um just 26 people counted.

C

So I know the efforts in minneapolis to get out the count were very strong this time around and we'll look at response rates there in a moment. uh But if, if any of you- and I know some of you on this call- did have a part to play in the outreach efforts around the 2020 census, you can absolutely claim responsibility claim credit for holding on to all of minnesota's eight congressional districts such a small margin.

C

What we also learned for the state overall is that we continued to become more diverse.

C

There are our 402 569 additional minnesotans that we added over the last decade and the white non-hispanic population began to decline in the state overall and many communities across the state. We saw the same pattern with declining white non-hispanic population and continued growth of bypoc black indigenous people of color groups, and that's true for minnesota overall for many communities.

C

It's not true in minneapolis, as we'll see in a moment, but I just kind of want to give you this context, first, that what we're seeing generally is a decline, a very, very slight decline in the white non-hispanic population.

C

When I talk about this, people's minds typically go to migration who's moving here, who's moving away. This is really mostly driven by the people who are already living here and who's having babies and who is in the high mortality age groups. It really is just the result of minnesotans who are already living here, going about their daily lives and having families and getting up in their ages um into those older years, and so, when you see these numbers, it's really kind of just natural life progression.

C

That is propelling diversity forward, because we have much more uh racial and ethnic diversity in the younger age groups, and so those groups tend to diversify our population as as we move forward and and that white non-hispanic population is declining. Regardless of what happens with uh migration, we learned that most of the growth in the state of minnesota was concentrated in the seven county uh twin cities, metropolitan area on this graph, the orange or in this map. The orange colors.

C

The counties on the on um that are represented in orange are those that lost population in percentage terms over the last decade. So you can see across the western edge of the state, the northern edge and part of the southern edge that many of those orange counties lost population. They tend to be more rural in many areas of the state that contain metropolitan areas, but especially the twin cities.

C

Metro gained population, which you see in the in the blue, color um represented uh by this map, uh the rochester metro, uh the moorhead metro kind of shows up in darker in darker blue here.

C

But again, it's really the twin cities, metropolitan area that led the growth, and we can see that represented here when we look at which counties grew the most, with hennepin having the largest bubble and adding 129 000 residents of those 402 000 people that I talked about earlier so fully 78 of the state's growth was concentrated in the twin cities. Metro, it really picked up this decade. It's it's been going strong for many decades, metro growth, but especially this decade we saw that um uptick in growth in our metropolitan areas and especially the twin cities.

C

All of our 87 counties are represented on this graphic here, which each of the bubbles representing a county with the bubbles in red being those bubbles that lost population over the decade.

C

So turning to what happened in minneapolis, I first before I get to the numbers, I want to talk about the minneapolis residents response to the census, and I mentioned that there was a really wonderful group of people, a large group of people, a diverse group of people who worked on making sure that people understood how it is to how important it is to fill out the census and why it's important to do so. um And so there was really a lot of energy around that.

C

um Even though it was a terrible terrible time to take a census in 2020.

C

um There really was a lot of organizing that happened and we actually increased our response rate not only in minnesota but also in minneapolis in all of the areas that I'm showing you here, the self-response rate actually increased at a time when we would have expected it to have declined so between 2010 and 2020.

C

We saw we've seen declines in the response um in all kinds of surveys across the land, and so we would have expected uh the survey. um The big survey, the census to have had a lower response rate as well. That actually didn't happen. um You can see that um 74 of minneapolis residents responded to the census on their own without additional follow-up from a census taker, so that doesn't mean that 74 of the households were counted in minneapolis. That just means that 74 of people did it on their own.

C

Without a visit from a census taker, um the additional percentage uh was counted either by administrative records or by a follow-up visit from a census taker.

C

um There are still questions about a quality that are outstanding, that we don't have information on. Quite yet, and I I will speak to that a little bit, some of where my concerns are in the overall quality of the count.

C

But what I want to tell you generally is that when you have a high response rate to the census, as we did in minnesota as we did in minneapolis it, um it bodes well for the quality of the count, because when people are answering themselves, they are answering much more thoroughly and appropriately than say, a proxy responded.

C

When the census taker goes out to a household and can't reach the person who lives in the household, they sometimes will go to a neighbor, a mail carrier, someone else that may know something about that household and collect that information from them, and that information tends not to be as accurate, so um to have a a higher response rate to the census. A self-response rate, that's higher, um really does um do wonders for for the quality of the count. Overall, you can see for most of minnesota or I'm sorry for most of minneapolis.

C

We see kind of a darker edge around kind of the whole area of minneapolis, and it's more toward um the center of the city, where we have slightly lower response rates, self-response rates but still high, and it's this area, I'm not sure if you can see my cursor but the kind of yellow, colored area that there's a considerably lower self-response, and that is near the east bank of the university of minnesota. That's one of the areas that I still have outstanding concerns of just how well did we count our college students.

C

um This graph is still showing us not number of people which we will get to. I promise, but it's showing us how the self response to the census changed over time and the red areas are showing you if there was a considerable drop off a drop off of 10 10 percentage points or more um in the self-response of that area as compared to 2010.

C

and um again that area around the university of minnesota saw a considerable drop-off this time around, and so it is in that area that I am kind of most concerned. When I look across minneapolis, you know most concerned of that area that saw a considerable drop also just knowing that it's concentrated with college students is a concern.

C

College students who live on campus were counted by the census bureau through their school, so the school submitted administrative records about who lived in their dorms.

C

um If they were able to do so um and that's for the university of minnesota, they did submit, they were able to submit information for their students, but for those who were living off campus, that's where the real concern is, and that's because the pandemic hit right at the same time, that classes were shutting down.

C

I'm sorry, the the pandemic hit classes shut down right at the same time that um census takers would have been going out to these college areas and they weren't able to get out into the field as they had planned to do, and that's why we're seeing perhaps this drop off in response rate.

C

That said, the numbers that we have for redistricting are the numbers that we have for redistricting, there's not going to be another set of numbers that are coming. I just want to be um fully transparent and let you know everything that I know about the data that we're getting out of the 2020 census. So that's that's why I raised this issue. um Is that really the census bureau did a good job moving forward in incredibly difficult circumstances?

C

um You know the pandemic was a huge one. There were other difficult circumstances as well, uh but it's that count of college students. I think that that we really may um need to study further moving forward.

C

um So, let's get to the numbers. Now. What we saw uh is a rise in minneapolis's population. We grew from 300 578 000 in 2010 to 429 954 in 2020, and I'm showing you kind of way back to 1970 what the population was.

C

We really have seen generally a dip in population a little bit of a growth between 1990 and 2000, just 14 000 people, but you can see that the almost 50 000 that were added this decade is much more than we have seen in many many uh decades, and so um this, this burst of growth um represents concentrated growth in minneapolis. I I talked about the concentrated growth in the twin cities.

C

Metropolitan area- it really was much of it was- was concentrated in the center cities, particularly in minneapolis, and we can see that when we look at the state's fastest growing cities here, minneapolis tops the list in terms of the fastest growing cities. Over the last decade, uh saint paul comes in second at just uh just over 26 000, and then you can see a series of other cities, many of which are suburban cities in the twin cities. That also grew considerably over the last decade.

C

Many, but not all, of those cities are those that are kind of on the edges of the metro that still have room to build and expand kind of into undeveloped or unresidential uh land. But you can also see some of the uh suburbs that are closer into the center edina, for example, st louis park um that have have been around for for some time and kind of fully uh developed, uh but now are kind of growing up into the air in addition and filling in density.

C

um In addition to kind of just moving out into farmland,.

C

When we look by race at the changes that have occurred in minneapolis, we deviate a little bit from the story. I was telling you earlier where we see a decline in the white non-hispanic population and we see an increase in uh bypac populations, because in minneapolis what happened is the white? Non-Hispanic grew and uh bypac populations grew as well, and you can see that here by looking at 2010 in 2020.

C

Because of this growth, minneapolis went uh kind of jointly from about 40 percent uh bypac to about 50 over the course of of the decade.

C

Now, if we look group by group, uh you can see that we have some detail so far in the uh groups that grew and kind of the racial composition of the city of minneapolis, uh the black population black or it includes black or african american. So it includes both u.s born uh black african-american residents and also people belonging to newer immigrant groups. That's all in that one category um called black or african american is how it's listed on.

C

The census form grew the most in minneapolis, along with the multiple race group that you can see to the far right of this graph.

C

The multiple race group really has grown considerably, and you know this is one way of looking at the data. You can also look at these data rather than looking at each of these groups uh for single race reporting. For example, I'm showing you here black or african american alone. These are people who said that they are only one race and that race is, for example, black or african american, but if we included, rather than putting every everyone who reported more than one race that you can see, there were 22 000 of them.

C

If we included them across the other groups, we would see a slightly different distribution of groups of these groups, just because you would have more people who belong to these groups, but they would be double counted.

C

It's just one thing to keep in mind that that multiple race group is a group that is continuing to grow, and it means that if we look at individual groups, people reporting one race alone that we're missing some of the picture of that that diversity.

C

And then, if we look at uh the districts, the wards uh in in minneapolis, we can see that the third district grew by far the most in the last decade. So the ideal population is about 33 000, just over 33, 000 and ideal. um You all probably know this, but for those who who may not know it who are listening to the broadcast, the ideal is just the city population, divided by the 13 districts that will be built from the block level census data.

C

um So you can see that there was growth in the second over the ideal. The second is over the ideal that the third is over the ideal, um the fifth, um the the fourth just barely, uh uh let's see the tenth um and then the other districts are slightly below the ideal. Those that are above will need to shrink in geographic size to meet that ideal population of 33, 073 and those that are under the ideal. For example, district 8 will need to grow in geographic size to make up that same number of people.

C

Before I move on to kind of the racial composition of these districts, I just want to make a note of kind of one of the features of the census data that we're getting this time around is data that have been protected by something called differential privacy, and this is something that the census bureau has done: um purposely to protect the privacy and confidentiality of people who responded to the census, um they've injected noise or fictitious people into the data at very low levels of geography, so that, when you build blocks together into larger wards, some of that fuzziness or some of that noise is doesn't make such a big difference.

C

But when you look block by block by block you don't have the exact accuracy that you think you may have, and so I guess for those people who, for those of you and many of you, are working on building maps.

C

You should be aware of that impact of differential privacy, which just means that you don't have a lot of precision at that block level. But when you sweep blocks together into larger districts that that accuracy improves.

C

One way to think about it is: you: are building building these districts not with a scalpel but with with a broom that you're sweeping what you think is the appropriate population into these larger districts, and that's again, what we have to work with this time around is is the redistricting data that have been that have been published.

C

And so um we can see here a considerable racial uh diversity across our diff, our various districts. We have uh five districts, I'm sorry. We have four districts here uh that have a percent white that is below 50 percent.

C

You can see that districts, uh 5 and 6 have a high percentage of african-american or black. This isn't news to any of us who have lived in minneapolis for some time, but these are. These are the latest census figures coming out of the 2020.

C

and then in district 9? You can see a considerably sizable population of hispanic or latino residents, nearly a third of that population. A third of that district in in 2020 were hispanic or latino.

C

Finally, I just want to note kind of the changes that are happening um where minneapolis is positioned with respect to the redistricting. That's happening at the state legislature, um because it's undergoing a parallel process and I think it positions minneapolis uh slightly different than than it was positioned in 2010.

C

for our u.s congressional districts. You can see that the ideal population size now is about 713 000 uh district 5, of which minneapolis is apart, grew by about 73 000 people.

C

And then we can see across the state senate districts. um You know a considerable spread in terms of which districts need to grow and which districts uh need to shrink in order to meet the ideal population of 85 000. That's a little bit easier to see here on this map.

C

It very closely mirrors those patterns that I was telling you about about where the growth happened in the state, the outer edge of the twin cities, metropolitan area and then, if we zoom in to the twin cities, even the minneapolis districts in dark green, there show you that they will need to shrink and additional districts will need to build, be built in those areas, particularly the house, the house district that will be uh close in size to the population that was added in minneapolis.

C

Now I don't know exactly how the legislature will draw those districts or how the court panel, that is also working on maps, will draw those districts, but just in terms of population size, there was enough growth in that area that that tremendous amount of growth in in minneapolis that considerable representation will be shifted. uh Inward into the city of minneapolis, and so with that I will stop sharing my slides and I am happy to take any questions you may have for me.

B

Thank you, doctor. Are there any questions for dr brower.

B

Now's, your chance you've put them in the chat or pipe up. um Remember sandberg! You have a question.

D

uh Thank you yes, um and this might be asking for too much, but I'm wondering um during the pandemic, which was the beginning part of the counting that was going on.

D

We heard news stories that a number of people were in fact relocating, either partly or in whole out state from some of the metro counties, including and including minneapolis, including hennepin, and does the census data capture. Any of that do we have any ideas? What happened there.

C

um I mean, I think, if we're not, if we're talking about people other than college students about the relocation, um we don't have information on that. Yet there's something. That's called a post-enumeration survey that the census bureau does, after it takes a census, and it goes back into sampled areas and surveys.

C

People in depth to compare against the census to make sure to to you, know, recollect the data in a subset of areas that are sampled to represent the whole accuracy of the census, and so that's something that is still going on, and so we will have a general sense of whether people were under counted in the state.

C

We don't believe we're going to get information at the city level to say whether there was an under count at the city level, but it will give us some information about whether we think people were missed, who who moved during during the pandemic.

C

My uh biggest concern, um of course, is those college students biggest concern because it was the the group that's really difficult to meet to catch anyway in a census um because they're just that their their focus is not on.

C

You know their civic responsibility to fill out, their census form they're thinking about their studies and they're thinking about their friends, and you know I I have a college student myself, so I'm pretty sure you know what she's thinking about and it probably wouldn't be the census, um and just because the university and other post-secondary schools were shutting down at the very same time that these forms were going out and that the um you know count didn't happen in these areas like it like it had initially been planned for.

C

um That's that's the group that, um as I said, I'm most concerned about.

D

B

Are there any other questions.

B

um Member kim has a question.

A

uh Hi, uh thank you for that presentation. I thought that was really interesting. My question is um so I'm, for example, I'm biracial- uh and I indicated as such on my census form. uh So, but you know one of those components is I'm also asian. Does that mean that, like on our district r, I'm not going to show up as being asian, I'm only going to show up as being in the two or more races category.

C

C

So the census bureau has published data that allows you to look in look in um look at people who are who have reported as biracial in either or in multiple categories. It depends on if it's district r, that minneapolis is using, is that is that correct the one that I kind of showed you today?

C

I didn't see on that tool um that there was a way to look at multiple race alone, it's called alone or in combination, but those data are published. It may be that you have to upload them into the tool from the census data um that that have been published so so they're out there. They just would need to be added additionally and those kind of 22 000 people that we looked at on that one graph would need to be um redistributed into the various groups.

C

um The difficulty then, of course, is that um you know you're you're double counting people in in multiple groups, and so it's not you know you. You probably wouldn't um take that information to draw those lines, but just as an additional data source to understand how the um racial composition of different groups changes. If you take that broader lens.

A

C

A

Thank you, yeah.

B

Remember johnson has a question: go ahead, member johnson. Thank you.

E

Chair uh my question- I guess, is getting at one of the things that we have to evaluate as we're thinking about communities of interest and, of course it has a very broad scope of what that actually means for the law we need to consider. But I'm thinking about the limitations in what the census data provides. I think group member can brought up a really good point. You know what does multi-racial mean. We also discovered that it seems, like hispanic seems to be separated out.

E

It's not divided up as ethnicity, it seems to be kind of puts all together in district r, and I guess the bigger point I have is that you know when we have a category like black, african-american or asian there's, not a lot of distinguishing between that. So are there any other resources that are published either by the census or otherwise to have this conversation about where people live within the city.

C

Yeah absolutely so. The census bureau does publish the information by hispanic ethnicity uh by different race groups, and so again that's out there, but I don't think it's in that mapping tool. um It looked to me like you could upload it.

C

I really just took a look at that tool today and it looked to me like you could upload some of your own data, so you could take it from the census bureau site, with kind of the full range of of data that are available and and put it into that tool or you could look at it just outside of that environment as well.

C

I'm happy to send a follow-up link to where you would get that data for the city of minneapolis, so it would be block level data and the full racial table that shows all of the multiple race categories and the table that shows a multiple race by hispanic or the race groups by hispanic ethnicity,.

E

That'd be fantastic. Thank you. So much.

B

That would be very helpful. Thank you. The next question is from member newhouse.

F

My question is about um the standard deviations we're working within to get to the desired population. Distribution between the words we're going to draw in our maps is five percent and that exists in um statute or in the charter language.

F

um I've come to the acceptance that, because the concept of equity is not really represented in statute or in charter language, as it comes to the demographics that we are limited to for um creating our maps. That standard deviation becomes that much more important, and so I wanted to check in with you about when you put up the map about the minneapolis self-reporting, the participation in the census.

F

Besides just the um the area around the university which was red, um there were also other areas of the city that had not it not to the great you know the 10 percent or greater um under participation, but there were other areas that had potentially under under participation that exceeds our five percent standard. Deviation that we're using to draw our maps. So my question is: are there other areas that don't rise to the underrepresentation level of the university, but that we're still had less less self-reporting? You know representation that we should be aware of.

C

Yes, thank you for that question. I really appreciate the opportunity to address that, because it's an important one, um absolutely um the um groups that are likely to be undercounted by a census are not just those that dropped in participation, and so I didn't intend to kind of represent that to this group. um The groups that are not likely to ris are less likely to respond to the census.

C

Are groups that you know we knew from before. The census would be less likely to respond for a multiple uh range of reasons, including language barriers, including distrust of the government, including um you know, just being busy having multiple jobs um you know being highly mobile, so populations of color by populations tend to be among groups that are less likely to respond to the census.

C

um There tends to be an undercount, and preliminary data suggests that there is an under count, or maybe an undercount, this time around, of children uh in the 2020 census, and there was a 2010 census, and so that is a concern as well. um You know, low wealth communities uh tend to be missed by census, and I think we saw that um we saw a light.

C

A lower response rate in communities that are more racially and ethnically diverse, as we would have expected, we did see a really great um outreach effort, but we did still see those lower response rates in the communities that are are historically undercounted by censuses, and so I think, while we can't quantify what that undercount is either of college students or populations of color or highly mobile populations or low wealth populations, um we can't quantify it at this time.

C

It's really, I guess good, to be aware of when you're looking at those data that that uh you know that that potential uh undercount is there and- and you know hopefully we'll have more information about uh what that under count is in over the next year. As this post-enumeration survey is, is released.

B

Thank you. The next question is from member rubenstein.

G

Thank you, mr chair. I had a related question. I also has been concerned about the undercount and it's really a two-part question. One is: uh are we bound by the census data, for instance the city of minneapolis sends out water bills and has that you know data about at least to some extent that people may live at certain addresses who are not counted in the census.

G

If we actually have that kind of information, is there a way we can use it or do we have to stick to the numbers provided us by the census, and I guess the other part of that question is really just to comment that, as you say, we have to be very aware of those areas where there may be an undercount, and I think we can use our five percent leeway to allow for it to some extent.

C

Thank you uh yeah great question. I don't actually know the answer for the city of minneapolis about whether you are bound to the census data. I do know um that um I don't want to overstate the errors either, because this is the the truth. Is we just don't know um fully about the quality of the census data? At this time, um however, there's not really a data source that is comparable that could be used for redistricting.

C

You pointed out utility bills, you sure could point to those and say there should be more households counted than were counted. That would be, you know that would be um good evidence to have, but with those utility bills you wouldn't have the age or the composition or the number of people in the household, um so you wouldn't really have the the full picture that the census was hoping to collect.

C

um So, even though the census is imperfect, um this is what we have right now. If minneapolis charter allows for additional data sources- and you feel like you're able to get your hands on something that is more complete, um then then the census that that certainly, you know, may be a possibility. It's really tough right now, just to know, though, just because I wanted to I wanted to bring to you the issue of census, quality um that this was a particularly hard census to take.

C

There was a lot going on um and, and it was it was a tough one, um but I don't want to um fully undermine the quality of it, because we just don't know and in many cases it's there isn't there isn't an alternative.

C

Unfortunately, we we've got what we've got, um and so I'm happy to come back at some point and and let you know when some of those surveys come back and we have more information about the quality but kind of the legislature, the courts, many other you know, states and cities across the land are are moving forward with the redistricting data um as they are, but I have heard I have also heard of other cities that have used supplemental data just to compare what they've got coming out of the census.

C

So it's not it's not unheard of. Thank you.

G

B

Thank you, member muggin, did you have a comment? Is that a question you have or just a comment.

H

Oh, that was just a comment um that homeless people also might be under counted. I know when I was doing census work last year that there was a difficult time trying to track down people who are not housed.

C

Yeah, thank you. Yeah you're, absolutely right.

B

And I don't see any other questions give one last call for questions.

B

Hearing none. Thank you very much, dr brower. It's been very informative and I think we've learned a lot. We really appreciate your coming to join us taking time out of your day.

C

Absolutely it's good to be here. Minneapolis is my hometown, so I'm I'm thanking you for your for your service uh to to our city. All of you on the on the redistricting group.

B

Thank you very much.

C

Yep bye-bye.

B

Bye hearing um no further questions and there being no other items on our agenda, we are adjourned. Thank you very much.

B