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Forty-five percent of San Mateo County households have completed the census — the second highest rate in the state — and the highest self-response has been in San Carlos, Hillsborough and Belmont.

Only Santa Clara County is ahead of San Mateo County statewide, Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-Palo Alto, said Wednesday.

“California is a big, bold, beautiful, diverse state,” Berman said.

He spoke during a telephone town hall about impacts of COVID-19 on the 2020 census.

Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, who with U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, and San Mateo County Supervisor Carole Groom also participated in the town hall, said California has been seen as the hardest state in the nation to count.

Its diverse population and geographic size help explain that challenge, Mullin said.

State and local elected officials made an emphatic appeal last week urging all Santa Clara County residents take part in the 2020 census, announcing a series of initiatives to make sure everyone gets counted, despite the shelter-in-place order due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Households have already started to receive census forms in the mail with a unique ID and instructions on how to fill out the questionnaire, kicking off a monthslong effort by the U.S. Census Bureau to get an accurate decennial count of residents living in the United States. Census data serves as the basis for region's apportionment of federal funding and can affect California's share of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives for next 10 years.

In an address framed as myopic in its laser focus on a single issue, local lawmakers largely lauded Gov. Gavin Newsom’s resolute commitment to solving the state’s homelessness crisis.

Assemblymen Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, and Marc Berman, D-Palo Alto, as well as state Sen. Jerry Hill-D San Mateo, roundly applauded the sentiments shared in Newsom’s State of the State speech, Wednesday, Feb. 19.

Noting the uniqueness in largely designating the entirety of the annual event to a specific topic, the Peninsula’s representatives suggested the urgency around resolving homelessness was deserving of the outsize attention it received.

“It was appropriate, fitting and necessary for him to address it and take it on as aggressively as he did,” said Hill. “It is the crisis of our time.”

Berman shared a similar perspective, also calling homelessness the biggest issue facing the state.

At the edge of the City College of San Francisco main campus, there's a small, invisible neighborhood.

Its residents look out for each other, keep the sidewalks clean and sometimes throw quiet dinner parties. They share tools and recipes, help each other out with projects and give a friendly welcome to newcomers.

But of the 60,000-plus students who attend City College, it's likely that many walk through this neighborhood every day without knowing it's there. And that's exactly the point.

"It is a bit of a paradox," Kyle Murphy said. "Create community, keep below the radar."

Murphy is, according to his friends, the unofficial mayor of this small and flourishing neighborhood. Dotting the edge of campus along Frida Kahlo Way, somewhere around a dozen nondescript vans and work trucks are hiding the handcrafted tiny homes of City College students, attending school in the face of San Francisco's record-high rent.