Bloomberg scoffs at census housing data

The Census Bureau released the results of the most recent count and had 8.175 million people living in New York City, an increase of about 166,000 people over the 2000 edition. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he thinks the census undercounted by “roughly 2.6 percent of our population, or about 225,000 people” in a statement released today.

“It doesn’t make any sense at all,” he said. Bloomberg noted the difficult task the Census Bureau was faced with and said the city had to provide the bureau with more than 127,000 addresses of which it wasn’t aware.

“The census tells us that there’s 170,000 units that were built — housing units — that were built in New York City over the past decade,” Bloomberg said. “Yet the census says that these 170,000 units are home to only 165,000 people. Can’t be, I mean there’s a lot more than one person on average.”

The census had Brooklyn growing by just 1.6 percent (39,374 people) over the last decade, and Queens by just 0.1 percent (1,343 people). Both borough presidents expressed their dismay at the findings in a statement, too. Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer called the results “preposterous.” TRD