Homeless Tally Overstated for L.A., Study Says
There are no more than 1,000 people sleeping on the streets of Los Angeles’ Skid Row, according to a lengthy study of homeless people that challenges the validity of previous estimates, including one by the federal government that described Los Angeles as the homeless capital of the United States.
The latest study, which is bound to fuel a growing local controversy over the level of care now offered to the transient poor, conflicts with earlier studies that estimated the number of homeless as high as 15,000 for Skid Row and 33,000 for the city.
A 1984 report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said that Los Angeles’ homeless population of 31,000 to 33,000 led the nation. It said most of that population was concentrated in Skid Row.
Poor but ‘Settled’
However, the latest study, commissioned by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, characterizes the majority of Skid Row residents as poor but “fairly settled residents”.
The study, which was obtained in draft form by The Times, was criticized by local experts on the homeless who question its methodology and who worry that its conclusions, particularly the low estimate of the number sleeping on the streets, will be used to justify a cut in services to the urban poor, especially those on Skid Row.
“What happens is some people, who either don’t know the depths of the problem or are very hesitant to get involved in it can use that as an excuse not to give the resources to help these individuals,” said Rodger K. Farr, a psychiatrist for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.
In a 1982 study, Farr estimated that there were 7,000 to 15,000 people living in the Skid Row area and 30,000 in the county. Last year, he co-authored a second study of the homeless that also looked at mental illness among that population.
The study also has political implications for the future development of Skid Row, where the CRA must balance the interests of poor residents with conflicting desires of the growing food, toy and electronics industries in the area.
CRA Administrator John Tuite said his agency had not had time to draft recommendations based on the $119,000 homeless study. But he did say he saw nothing in the study that would lead the CRA to reduce its commitment to shelter and other social services in the area.
$40 Million Spent
In the last decade, the agency has spent almost $40 million on Skid Row shelters and services.
The CRA’s study, which focused on the 50-block area encompassing Skid Row, is different from earlier ones, according to its authors, because it does not count as homeless people those who live on a regular basis in shelters or Skid Row hotels that accept emergency vouchers from the County Department of Social Services.
“There can be no question that a large proportion of the residents of the Skid Row area have no homes in the sense that most Americans conceive of them,” the report says. “At the same time, many of the members of this group do have regular, dependable shelter in a more elemental sense.
”. . . This is not to say, of course, that this ‘home’ is the one they want to have or that they arguably should have,” the study says. “The point is simply that, in making definitional decisions, there is a distinct difference between those who literally and chronically have the use of no conventional sleeping facilities and those who do use such facilities all or most of the time.”
The study distinguishes between those it considers “chronically homeless” and those it calls “episodically homeless” and does not consider the latter as truly homeless. Such people include those who live a few days of each month on the streets or in emergency shelters because, even with the voucher system, they cannot afford to spend every night in a hotel.
Distinction Blurred
At the same time, the study suggests that the dividing line between chronically and episodically homeless people may be growing thinner as it becomes harder for the area’s residents to afford the average monthly cost of a hotel room.
Ten years ago, according to the study, a single person’s monthly relief check of $161 was more than 2 1/2 times the average $60 monthly cost of a hotel room. Today, the study says, an individual’s $228 monthly relief grant is barely enough to cover the $200 average hotel cost.
While the study estimates that there are 11,000 to 12,000 people living on Skid Row, it says most of them, about 8,000, are living in the area’s 80 single room occupancy (SRO) hotels. It estimates that about 2,100 live in shelters and missions.
Based on a six-day canvass last October, the study puts the number of people sleeping on the streets at between 700 to 1,000.
“If the city’s goal were to put a roof over the heads of all the people on Skid Row on a given night during this season, 1,000 more people would have to be accommodated,” the study says. Then it adds: “Of course, some may be choosing not to sleep inside.”
Method of Sampling
The study was prepared for the CRA by Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alschuler Inc., a consulting firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles whose past work includes a 1984 study on rental housing for the Los Angeles City Council.
Discussing the method of identifying the homeless, Francine F. Rabinovitz, vice president of the firm, said the study used a sampling system used last year by the University of Massachusetts in a report on homelessness in Chicago.
The study, besides counting the inhabitants, draws a portrait of Skid Row society and how it has changed. Using census data to augment its own research, the study estimates that the population has nearly doubled since 1970 and that it is younger than it was, dropping from the 40-60 age range to the 20-40 range.
Ethnicity has changed dramatically, with the percentage of nonwhites rising from 31% in 1970 to more than 70% today. The study attributes the rise in nonwhites to a greatly increasing number of young black men. It says that women make up about 20% of the Skid Row population, and that the percentage of women is increasing. It also reports that “some families with children have joined the population” but does not give a number.
Drug, Alcohol Abuse
The study presents statistics showing an increase in drug and alcohol abuse and a sharp rise in crime. Citywide, it says, the crime rate is about 95 crimes per 1,000 people per year, while on Skid Row, it is about 500 per 1,000 per year.
“There is a more common ‘cheap life’ attitude, increased violence and greater willingness to abuse people,” the study said, quoting an unnamed social worker in the area.
Quoting another, it says “there is a tremendous increase in violence. Hot and cold weapons are more common. After 6 p.m. there is more hanging out in groups, active street life, party clusters on corners, open drug dealing. In the 70s the street in the evening was quiet and the street people were lonely.”
While the study found that nearly half of the residents of Skid Row graduated from high school and that 18% of them had attended college, it concludes that “residents of the area tend to have dropped out of the mainstream earlier than in former years.”
The authors acknowledge in their study that there are political implications in what they are saying about the homeless population.
“The size of the homeless population, particularly the unsheltered homeless population, makes a big difference in thinking about the allocation of resources to alleviate problems in Skid Row. If there are large numbers . . . in Los Angeles, according to HUD estimates--decision makers may see no way to provide enough resources to even dent the problem. Size is also a political issue. Groups concerned with the plight of the homeless tend to back large estimates, perhaps to highlight the significance of the homeless problem.”
Artificial Findings Feared
Some local experts on the homeless said there was merit in breaking down the homeless problem into categories, but the Rev. Eugene Boutilier, emergency services issues manager for United Way, which completed an extensive study of shelters for the homeless in Los Angeles County last year, said:
“I haven’t read the study, but my worry is that it’s trying to artificially pull down the numbers by defining them, rather than problem-solving.”
He and others did not accept the survey’s number for those “chronically homeless” or regularly living on the street. The study used a statistical sample to count these numbers sleeping in four public places on Skid Row, such as the San Julian Park, and along the sides of 36 blocks, concluding there were 700 to 1,000 people sleeping out at any one time. Its critics felt that the count was too limited.
“I do not believe that’s accurate,” said county psychiatrist Farr. For every one homeless person who is visibly sleeping on the street, there are “at least three more, under bridges, in abandoned buildings, or in all-night theaters,” he said.
The founder of the Downtown Women’s Center, Jill Halverson, said she believed the numbers are too “fluid” to be accurate at all times of the year and remarked of the 1,000 figure:
“It may not have been low in October, but it’s probably low for today, because the population in the neighborhood swells in the winter. The number in October is going to be different than the number in January or July.”
‘Edge of Homelessness’
Halverson said the greatest danger of the study is that its low number of truly homeless people could cause local officials to forget about the people who inhabit the Skid Row hotels and missions who are on the verge of homelessness.
“All of those people live on the edge of homelessness. If their check doesn’t arrive from the welfare department, then they are homeless.”
Boutilier noted that in the last month of cold weather, as the city and downtown shelters rushed to increase the amount of shelter available, “We came close to adding 1,000 beds. And there were still people outside.”
While not agreeing with Rabinovitz on her low figure, Boutilier felt it was a good start at addressing this category of homelessness. “I think one of the points they’re making is that the situation isn’t hopeless, isn’t totally out of control and that with sensible planning a great deal of the problem could be solved. I agree with that.”
The numbers of homeless, however, has long been a controversial issue, with many deriding a 700-person estimate of homelessness citywide made by the Los Angeles Police Department in January, 1985, as too low, and Farr’s 1982 estimate of 15,000 on Skid Row alone as too high.
Rabinovitz said Saturday that one of the goals of her study was “to help resolve discrepancies in previous work on the demographics of Skid Row.”
The 1984 HUD study that dubbed Los Angeles the homeless capital, for example, was derived from interviews with informed experts who guessed about the homeless problem throughout the county. The recent U.S. Conference of Mayors survey claiming a 50% increase in Los Angeles in demand for emergency shelter relied on the number of telephone calls made in a year to Info Line, a county referral service, without taking into account any duplication of calls from the same person.
