It will be working- and middle-class Brooklyn against hoity-toity Manhattan to see who gets counted the most.
That after NYC Census Director Julie Menin and Executive Assistant Corporation Counsel, NYC Law Department announced yesterday that Midwood will go up against the Upper East Side in the second “NYC Census Subway Series” to mobilize New Yorkers to self-respond to the census immediately, following President Trump’s move to cut the census short by one month.
“For the second week of our Census Subway Series, we’re declaring a showdown between Midwood, Brooklyn and the Upper East Side, Manhattan, for a week, starting next Monday, August 31,” said Menin.
“We’re tapping into one of NYC’s inexhaustible resources, neighborhood pride, to get out the count. The census is a nationwide competition, and we need a complete count to get our fair share of the hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding our communities rely on, and the representation we deserve in government,” she added.
The Census Subway Series is a five-week challenge in which two neighborhoods from different boroughs will compete against each other to see which neighborhood posts the largest gains in its self-response rate over the week.
The first two neighborhoods to compete were Jamaica, Queens (current self-response rate: 50.9%), and Canarsie, Brooklyn (current self-response rate: 48.7%). The victor of the first match will be declared on Monday, August 31.
In this matchup, Midwood (current self-response rate: 54.7%) and the Upper East Side, Manhattan (current self-response rate: 49.6%) will compete for bragging rights from Monday, August 31 to Sunday, September 6.
In addition to bragging rights, residents of the competing neighborhoods — as well as any New Yorker who completes the census during the next five weeks — may be eligible to win exciting prizes from Seamless, Lyft, and MoMA as part of the new NYC Counts census contest.
Any New Yorker who completes the census between Monday, August 17 and Monday, September 21 can enter the contest to win one or more of the following prizes:
- $1,000 gift card from Seamless (six total)
- A $50 Lyft credit voucher and annual CitiBike membership (100 total)
- An annual membership to The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 (a $200 value; 25 total)
All New Yorkers must take a photo of their census completion confirmation page and upload it to the City’s website to enter. Complete rules can be found at nyc.gov/censuscontest.
As of August 25, New York City’s self-response rate is 57.1%, and the nation’s is 64.6%.
