Advocate Will Urge Homeless to Boycott Special Census Count

A leading advocate for the homeless said Monday that he will urge those who live on the streets not to cooperate with this year’s census.

“You can’t count all the people in the streets,” said Mitch Snyder of Washington’s Community for Creative Non-Violence. “Experience quickly teaches the homeless that to be identified as such is to risk harassment . . . and abuse.”

David Hayden of the Justice House Community, a shelter in Roanoke, Va., said he also would decline to cooperate.

“The key to survival for homeless people is invisibility,” Hayden said. “If you are a homeless woman with children you deny being homeless because you don’t want to lose the children.”

Peter A. Bounpane, assistant census director, said he hopes that the agency can persuade Snyder and other homeless advocates to change their minds.

Snyder burned census envelopes sent to him with materials concerning the effort. He said, however, that other groups are cooperating and that opinion is divided in the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Major federal programs are targeted and funds distributed based on census figures.

Snyder contends that the Reagan and Bush administrations have sought to minimize the problem of homelessness and that, because many homeless would be missed, the census results will lead to less money and attention for the needy.

The Census Bureau plans a special count of the homeless March 20, about 10 days before the survey of the rest of the nation. Census takers across the country will spend the night visiting shelters, flophouses, hospitals, missions and counting people on the streets.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness, a private research and assistance group, estimates that 2 million people are homeless for at least a portion of the year and that the number has been growing.