With only half of New Yorkers responding to the 2020 census, city officials are holding a week of activities across the city hoping to get a complete count of residents and prevent losing federal aid.
A team of census workers and volunteers were at Restoration Plaza in Bed-Stuy Wednesday helping people fill out the census.
The team used a megaphone to get the message across about how important the census is for the community.
New York City Census Director Julie Menin says that without a complete count of residents, the city could lose billions of federal dollars for schools, hospitals, transit and other critical programs.
She also says the city is at risk of losing up to two congressional seats. Right now, she says the overall self-response rate for the city is 54%.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Brooklyn is the borough with the lowest self-response rate in the city, at just 51%.
This is just one of more than 20 events happening citywide as a part of the #getcountednyc census week of action.
With this event alone, organizers said they got about 50 people to fill out the census in just a couple of hours.
The deadline to complete the census is Oct. 31.