This is off topic, I really don't know where else to put it so I'm asking it here. I'm also going to purposely misspell the topic I'm talking about.

The A*eric*an Comm*nity Sur*ey

Just got this in the mail today. Are they serious? I have to fill this out by law, or get a penalty? I just googled this and it seems that if you don't fill this out, they send it to you again, and when you don't return it filled out, they call your house, then they come to your door.

Where the heck do we live? In Russia?

Have any of you received this survey?

And what did you do? The questions are so invasive, I can't believe this. They want to know what time you leave for work. If you gave birth to any children. etc. what health insurance do we have, are we related to this person, when did we get married? All none of their business.

And they scare you by indicating that you MUST fill it out and return it. It's the law, and you will suffer penalties.

Yikes!!!

Mel
P.S. The address was to "Resident, Apartment 2, (and gave my address). I am in a 2 family house.

Is Apartment 2, the top floor or the first floor?

It sounds like the equivalent of the UK census form.

It is a way of categorising the nation, I never fill them in.

This is the US census I believe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Community_Survey

If you don't send it back, they will come to your home. And they will interview your neighbors. On our street we were the only responders, and when the live humans showed up it was quite impressive. They had name tags, and signs on their cars.

The information from the census is very important, to get Federal aid for cities and states for elderly, disabled, and children.

A funny thing happened when the live interviews began. They had already been here once. Hubby returned home from work (he had a business audit) and one of these census workers approached him with her badge held out, so he whipped out HIS Federal ID and she jumped back! Then they both laughed.
She explained alot to him then, in fact. Since we have many empty homes in the whole neighborhood, the workers were interviewing everyone about the people who left, so they could figure out if they filled out a form from the location they moved to, etc. It is important not to overcount, or undercount, as you can imagine.

Holy moly!

That must be interviews in the millions!

Hubby says there are two versions of the Census... the short one which we returned, and the long one, which we did not receive.

Mel...did you respond to any Census yet? Here in Midwest it was in the early summer.

I would contact them,
http://2010.census.gov/2010census/

Just to make sure this thing you received is not a spoof of some kind.
I would do this before returning it.

Oh it's completely real. There are blogs all over the internet on this thing. We received our census papers awhile ago, filled it out and the one thing I'm not sure about is that this envelope was addressed to Resident Apt 2.

I live in a two family private house. So is apartment 2 the upstairs apartment or the first floor apartment. The house I live in has a basement also.

So is this survey thing supposed to be filled out by the people on the first floor (street level), or upstairs on the second floor.

Thanks much

Melody