As April 1 looms, so do the questions: Just how do full time RVers respond to the US census? It’s an interesting scenario, since as the Census folks says, “We don’t mail forms to people, we mail them to residences.” It’s a tough act to mail a census form to a rolling resident.
We spoke with a national census representative in Washington, DC, earlier today, and laid out the problem that some fulltimers may face–at least those who want to fill out the form.
“We have a program for folks like these,” our census guru tells us. “It’s called ETL.” Oh, bless government for acronyms that don’t sound like anything. ‘Ee-tell?” They call it the process of “Enumerating Transitory Locations,” like folks working for circuses, at marinas, and in RV parks. That process started back in mid-March and will go on til April 15. Of course, if you don’t happen to be a “carny” with the circus, or staying at a marina or RV park when the census folks come by–woops, you’ve been missed.
Others too, can easily be missed. Since they don’t send forms to people, if you get your mail at a private mail service, you probably won’t get a census form. If you’re not caught in an RV park, or you are at some location that a census taker can’t locate, what’s to be done?
The Census folks hope that you’ll take the time to phone their “2010 Hotline,” where helpful workers can point you to a location where you can pick up a 2010 census form. However, other media types have commented that some of these locations are only open during rather limited hours, some are listed, but never got staffed, and a plethora of other issues that could make getting your form a bit on the difficult side. Still, those who persevere may get what they want. The hotline phone number is (866) 872-6868.
We found it quite interesting that we mentioned that many fulltime RVers are on the road, and don’t necessarily stay at “Joe’s RV Park,” the government guy seemed a bit astounded. He then told us, “We try our best to get to everyone,” but then pointed out that fulltime RVers are obviously,
“a very small minority of people in the US.” Wonder what he bases those figures on? Census 2000 perhaps? When that oh, so small minority of Americans were never found. Perhaps in the minds of bureaucrats, fulltime RVers just don’t exist.
