Activists to Link Homeless Census, Voter Registration : Outreach: The drive is called the first major effort to register street people. Courts have affirmed their eligibility to vote.

State and local activists plan to mount the most far-reaching effort to date in California to register street people to vote when the U.S. Census Bureau conducts its landmark count of the homeless next week.

Homeless advocates this week described the campaign as the first significant statewide effort to register homeless residents since the courts affirmed their eligibility to vote four years ago.

“There is a real need for the homeless to have more of a voice in what is happening to them,” said Kay Knepprath, co-director of the California Homeless Coalition. “Many task forces around the state will include a few homeless or formerly homeless, but they have not had a real voice to speak out and say what it is they need.”

Using the slogan “You Count Me, I Count You,” homeless advocates said they hope the voter registration campaign will remove fears among some homeless people that they will somehow be exploited by the census and draw more of them into shelters and other social service agencies during the count, scheduled for Tuesday.

Homeless advocates also reason that a voter-registration drive will give a feeling of greater political clout to those who believe that politicians have paid only lip service to the issues of homelessness.

“They are citizens, people who are being affected by policy decisions and they need to be represented as voters,” said Susan Oakson of the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force.

Homeless advocates generally cite a 1985 court decision as establishing the basis for voting rights of the homeless.

The case started when a group of homeless residents in Santa Barbara sought to register by using the street address of the park where they slept. The California Court of Appeal ultimately ruled that state election laws allow the homeless to use as a residence any place they normally sleep, such as parks, shelters or street corners.

Homeless residents are required, however, to list a mailing address where they can receive voting materials and many shelters and charitable agencies have agreed to lend use of their own addresses for the homeless.

The California Homeless Coalition, the largest group of its kind in the state, has sent mailers to nearly 400 shelters statewide, enlisting their aid in providing voter-registration materials. Of the 25 permanent shelters in Orange County, several have already indicated that they will participate.

In Los Angeles, more than 100 people, including a group of nuns and high school students, have volunteered to assist in the voter-registration drive, said Toni Reinis, a local homeless advocate. In addition, the Los Angeles County registrar of voters has promised to provide at least one staff person to handle the processing of voter-registration forms, Reinis added.

In Orange County and elsewhere in the state, the League of Women Voters and other local civic groups have offered to send teams to some of the shelters to assist in filling out forms.

The 1990 Census will be the first to try to quantify the problem of homelessness, even though census officials concede that it would be impossible to count every homeless person.

Nevertheless, many homeless advocates, including Washington-based Mitch Snyder, are burning census forms and urging others to boycott the count, arguing that the data will be used to minimize the homeless problem.

Some California activists said they will not cooperate in the registration drive because it is linked to the census.

“Some (homeless advocates) are using registration as an appeasement factor, but they are buying into a trap,” said Paul Boden, a coordinator with the San Francisco Homeless Coalition. “You can register people to vote any time you want to do it; to tie voting and the census together is unnecessary.”

In Orange County, where estimates of the number of homeless range from 4,000 to 10,000, advocates said they believe it will be particularly difficult to come up with an accurate census count because of the “invisibility” of much of the county’s homeless.

A recent demographic survey of nearly 2,000 homeless residents revealed that roughly 40% said they spent the previous night in their car or a motel, places that are unlikely to be tapped by census-takers.

For that reason, local homeless advocates say something like a voter-registration drive is needed to draw the homeless to shelters and other places where they are more likely to be counted.

“The homeless here are not as concentrated as in other parts of the state or country, but in terms of services being provided, we know they are there,” Oakson said.

In addition to shelters, the Orangethorpe United Methodist Church in Fullerton and St. John’s Lutheran Church in Orange will also provide voter-registration assistance for homeless people.