Tuesday Night Census of the Homeless Will Be Tough Task : Population: Advocates for the homeless say the head count will underestimate the number living on the streets. Some are refusing to cooperate.

Census workers in the South Bay are gearing up for their part in a 12-hour nationwide search for the homeless Tuesday night that will take them to shelters, street corners and abandoned buildings.

But there is widespread concern among homeless advocates about whether the herculean head count can succeed. They say the homeless are often loners who distrust the government and whose makeshift living quarters are difficult to find. Some are even advocating a boycott of the census.

South Bay regional census manager Carl Bailey, a former Marine who likens his job to a military field operation, admits that the all-night count will be difficult, but he says not pursuing it wholeheartedly would be tantamount to surrender.

“It seems unfortunate to me that people who profess to serve and take care of this disenfranchised people are attempting to deny them the ability to be counted as human beings,” Bailey grumbled. “I want to count people.”

Enumerators, as the census counters are known, will hit the streets Tuesday night with clipboards, flashlights and strict instructions to keep all the information they gather confidential.

The event has been dubbed “S Night”--the “S” stands for streets and shelters--and is considered the government’s most extensive effort ever to document a national homeless population that is estimated to be somewhere between 250,000 and 3 million.

Wearing special white vests with CENSUS TAKER emblazoned on the back, enumerators are scheduled to visit emergency shelters, all-night theaters and cut-rate hotels throughout the United States from 6 p.m. to midnight.

After a two-hour break, they will walk the streets from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. Wednesday counting anyone they find. When the enumerators come upon someone who is asleep or incoherent, they will estimate their age, sex and race and move on. From 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. they will stand in front of abandoned buildings and interview anyone who comes out.

Though census officials maintain that most social service agencies have cooperated with them, there are pockets of resistance as Tuesday’s count nears.

Mitch Snyder, perhaps the nation’s best-known homeless advocate, burned census information forms last month in Washington, D.C., and urged homeless people across the nation to boycott the decennial head count. He argued that the process is guaranteed to vastly undercount the homeless and play into the hands of politicians seeking to minimize the problem.

David Christiansen, director of the Harbor Interfaith Shelter in San Pedro, says he will not lift a hand for the census workers when they stop by his shelter because he does not want to add legitimacy to the count.

“It’s a classic example of the road to hell being paved with good intentions,” said Christiansen, who is also director of the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Steering Committee. “The only way they can possibly come up with some sensible approximation is to have some method of extrapolation, to admit that they only hit 10% of the problem on March 20.”

The fear among even those homeless advocates who are cooperating with census workers is that whatever figure the census yields will become the basis for government aid to charities and social service organizations through the year 2000.

“It is going to be a massive undercount, and for the next 10 years politicians and administrators will be pointing to it as ‘The Statistic,’ when in fact, it is flawed from the outset,” said John Suggs, executive director of the Los Angeles Countywide Homeless Coalition.

Amid all the skepticism, there are glimmers of hope.

One homeless man said he will participate to show society that homelessness is a bigger problem than many believe.

“It might open everyone’s eyes,” said Frank Rivera, 51, who has lived in Alondra Park in Torrance since August. “There’s a lot more people out here than people think.”

Some advocates for the homeless have had trouble convincing the homeless that being counted may mean more services and more awareness of their plight.

“I don’t think the homeless people are taking this very seriously. They are sort of laughing about it, saying, ‘You want to count us? Ha, ha, ha,’ ” said the Rev. Gary Erb, director of Christian Outreach Appeal in Long Beach.

“We’re trying to explain what the alleged principle of the census is,” said Nelda Trent, a volunteer at the House of Yahweh in Lawndale. “Their first question is, ‘What’s in it for me?’ ”

Trent says that even as she attempts to convince the homeless that participation is key, doubts linger in her own mind.

“I don’t know philosophically whether they should be counted,” she said. “They are not considered part of the Establishment any other time. My personal concern is that if we turn up a paltry amount, the number will be used against them.”

To gear up for the intensive search, census workers have been contacting social service agencies and homeless advocates for months, mapping out places where the homeless are known to congregate.

In Gardena, census workers will stop by the Alondra Park Methodist Church. In Torrance, they will hit the alley behind Ralph’s Market in the Del Amo Fashion Center. In Inglewood, it will be the National Guard Armory.

There will be many stops in between.

“We plan to go to them,” explained Brenda August, the Census Bureau’s director of homeless outreach for California. “We know we won’t count them all, but we’ll count many of them.”

The safety of the enumerators is a big concern among census officials, who have told workers to keep walking if they witness any drug sales and to call a supervisor if any confrontation develops. Homeless people themselves were originally going to join enumerators on the job, but as of last week none in the South Bay had passed the required employment test.

Area homeless advocates plan to gather homeless people Tuesday night into eight “clustering sites” in six South Bay cities for easy counting. Flyers announcing those plans have been distributed to homeless hangouts throughout the area; voter registration tables also will be set up.

But even those plans have tactical problems.

The homeless who arrive for counting will have to move on when midnight hits because most of the sites close at that time and do not have overnight accommodations. Homeless advocates wonder whether civic duty is enough to make people spend hours gathered in a location that cannot offer them a bed when the clock strikes midnight.

There’s also concern among homeless advocates in Torrance, Redondo Beach and Lawndale that Inglewood will receive credit for all the homeless that spend the evening in the Inglewood-based Armory, a cold-weather site for the homeless that is scheduled to be opened Tuesday night. If this occurs, the homeless providers fear, Inglewood would receive more than its fair share of funding for homeless programs.

Amanda Aldrich, head of the census team for the South Bay Homeless Coalition, has been working for four months to organize the count of the South Bay’s homeless. But she says the task seems overwhelming at times, and the coalition plans to lodge a formal protest of whatever number the Census Bureau comes up with.

“The number we’re going to get is going to be minuscule compared to the total homeless population,” she said last week. “The numbers will be ridiculous.”

But she and others in the coalition trudge on because they do not want to miss a chance to prove to area municipalities that there is a homeless problem.

“There is a strong denial of the homeless in the South Bay,” Aldrich said. “If we don’t count homeless, city officials will continue to say they don’t have homeless in their cities. That’s why we jumped into this. I don’t know how many people we’re going to get, but it’s better than nothing.”

Times staff writer Faye Fiore contributed to this story.