What’s going on?
By Paul Goldfinger
Ocean Grove is a CDP, which means a “census-designated place.” To be counted in the OG census, your home here has to be your main address.
For the 2010 census, there is a considerable amount of information available, but it represents page after page of data (i.e., numbers and percentages.) For example, you can find out how many people are of Lithuanian descent. The answer is .7%. Do you care? Or how about the fact that 40 percent of Grovers are of Irish descent?
So, just for the heck of it, let’s look at a sampling of the data, arbitrarily chosen by me. This is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather to give you an idea of the sorts of information that are available.
If you want to look into the data yourself, go to: Census data finder
Population: In 1990, it was 4,818. In 2000 it was 4,256 (-11.7%) and then in 2010 it was 3,342 (-21.5%).
30% are 62 or older. 91% are 21 years or older.
— The median age is 52.7 years.
Race: White=91%; African-American=5.5%; Hispanic of any race=4.3%. In 2000, African-Americans were 4%.
Religion: That is not assessed
Total housing units = 3,132, A housing unit is a place to live, so a two-family house has two housing units.
Total households = 1,948. A household consists of a housing unit and its occupants.
Households occupied by married couples (husband and wife living together)=23%
Households occupied by individuals: 57%
Household occupied by families: 32%. (A family consist of a householder and one or more related people). Same-sex married couples are not counted as families.
Households occupied by females–no husband: 6.3%
Renter occupied housing units: 51% of those that are occupied
Unoccupied housing units: 38% . All of these are for occasional use except 5% for rent.
Occupied housing units: 62%
SOUNDTRACK: “WHAT’S GOING ON?” This song is by the Funk Brothers and Chaka Kahn. It’s not exactly about the census, but I think it’s about worrying about what’s really important. And also it’s about figuring things out, like the census and the lyrics of this song.
Oh, what’s going on
What’s going on
Ya, what’s going on
Ah, what’s going on
I would take the census with a grain of salt (sand?).
I have no idea what form Sue above is writing about. Certainly not the standard census form I received and completed. Non of any of that info was asked for.
Census is/was based on where you were on April 1st 2010. You can only be counted once. I think many folks were counted more then once — at their non OG residence and again at their OG seasonal residence.
Many other errors that I cannot go into. Again I would not take the census all that seriously.
Even if you only live there two months/year, you need to full out the entire form. If under that, you need to fill out the sections on costs, such as property taxes, maintenance, utilities, etc.