Census letters in mailboxes soon

Citizens will soon receive a letter in the mail from the U.S. Census requesting that they fill out the 2020 Census online or by phone.

The letters should be arriving in mailboxes Thursday. The majority of residences should be expecting information around late March. Each letter will have a census ID number that is designated for that residence.

Everyone needs to fill out the census and be counted. Accurate population counts help in more than 300 different grant-making government programs that affect everything from school funding to road construction and repairs. Census records are sealed for 72 years before they are entered into the National Archive. Your information will not be shared with any agency.

For the 2020 Census, people are encouraged to use the ID in the letter to complete the form online at my2020census.gov or by phone.

Other mailings will be sent to residences that have not filled out the census. If it still isn’t done by April, households will get another notification along with a paper copy of the census to complete. No one will come to a person’s door about the census at this time as census takers will not go out into the field until May.

Be careful of scams. No legitimate census letter or census worker will ask for money or bank account numbers or credit/debit card information. No one should share that kind of information with anyone they don’t know.