The AJC hasn’t put their Sunday lead story online yet, but that won’t stop me from summarizing it now.  Paper, internet? It’s all just information to me!

First off, regardless of all the tough talk we’re hearing from local political leaders, it sounds like we shouldn’t be expecting the U.S. Census Bureau to make any dramatic adjustments to their Atlanta, Fulton, DeKalb 2010 Census numbers any time soon.  As the AJC notes in the second to last paragraph of its extensive investigation

…the census only accepts challenges to the count based on narrow, highly technical issues.  Re-counting, or mailing forms to alledgedly missed areas, isn’t an option, said census spokeswoman Stacy Vidal.

So if you’re willing to accept that all this blustering may be as worthless as a strong wind blowing across a windfarm-less vista, you may still be wondering “Why were Atlanta’s Census numbers 121,000 higher than they should have been?”

Well in short, according to the AJC, Fulton County used issued building permits to convince the Census bureau to raise estimates in both 2004 and 2006.  Additionally, the Census Bureau used a static household size of 2.3 people to calculate its Atlanta estimates over the last 10 years.  However the influx of young folks – hipsters and otherwise – actually pushed the household size down to 2.1 in 2010.  It’s a small change, but applied across the city’s population, that’s 45,000 fewer people, according to the AJC’s math.

The other static number that inflated the population figure?  Vacancy rates.  The AJC reports that by holding the vacancy rate at the 2000 level (10%) over the past decade in foreclosure-riddled Atlanta overestimated the population by another 39,000.  (The vacancy rate in 2010 was 17.6% according to the paper.)

There’s a bit more to it, but this gives a gist of what the AJC found.  Basically, there’s “fault” in both camps – and note that it’s with the ESTIMATES and not the official 2010 Census count.

Of course none of this actually matters because the Census Bureau doesn’t recount!