Detroit sues Census Bureau again, accuses feds of undercounting

The city, however, feels that adjustment didn't go far enough. The increases are "still woefully understate Detroit's population," the city states in its most recent lawsuit.

The Census Bureau could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

In exhibits to the court, the city submitted housing unit data in seven categories, addressing both gains and losses. they included 1,172 new construction permits for new housing units in 2022 — 158 more than the Bureau's estimate; Detroit Land Bank Authority compliances for 889 properties in 2021 and 1,481 in 2022; renovation permits from the city's building department, including 466 housing units rehabbed in 2021 and 531 units rehabbed in 2022; 6,771 new postal service addresses; and 10,890 new DTE residential unit customers.

Three years ago, Duggan and U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., announced that they would be challenging the census, arguing federal officials did not make a good-faith effort to accurately count the number of people during the pandemic and would gather evidence to prove whether that was true. At the time, the pair said they know by the number of DTE Energy utility bills that there are more than the estimated 640,000 residents living in the state's largest city.

At the city level, census data showed people are moving out of cities like Detroit, which shrank from 639,614 to 632,464, a decrease of more than 7,000 people from Census Day on April 1, 2020, to July 1, 2021.

Researchers in 2021 estimated that certain neighborhoods were undercounted by as much as 8.1% during the 2020 census, which would be an undercount of tens of thousands of people. Experts in the years since have expressed surprised by how much Wayne County and Detroit have continued to decline in population, arguing that faulty 2020 data was coloring counts since.

Detroit challenged the counts, but like most cities that mounted similar challenges, little to no changes were made.

Last year, Duggan called the Census Bureau a “complete national clown show,” criticizing the bureau for missing what he said were obvious signs the city was growing, including housing projects under construction across the city as well as an increase in the number of homes receiving mail as reported by the U.S. Postal Service.

"We knocked down 2,500 vacant houses and we had 2,000 rehabbed vacant houses. The Census Bureau took those to mean (6,000) families are leaving and didn't count the ones that stayed. The Census Bureau is going to officially declare population is growing in Detroit," Duggan said at the Detroit Policy Conference in January.

Speaking to reporters after the January event, Duggan added: "The Census Bureau understands you can't do annual estimates where you count the demolition of 2,500 vacant houses that led to a reduction of 6,000 people. I think we are convincing the Census Bureau that there was some real bias in the annual estimate and I'm optimistic they're going to fix it."

Duggan has previously asked the City Council if the city should take on the responsibility of demolishing blighted private-owned homes (he estimates about 5,000) with the remaining $250 million Proposal N bond initiative voters approved in 2020. However, it could be calculated as even more of a loss of population, according to the Census methodology, he and council members worry.

The Detroit Land Bank, the largest landowner in the city, has demolished 24,000 homes and sold and rehabbed 16,000 homes. In 2022, Duggan said, more vacant homes were rehabbed than demolished. The city is selling 200 homes each month on buildingdetroit.org.

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