Workers Ready to Tackle Task of Counting Homeless

Brian, Doris, Gwen and J. C. go to work for the federal government today, taking part in the nation’s most ambitious effort to count people like themselves: the homeless.

Beginning at dusk today and working through dawn Wednesday, U.S. Census Bureau officials and homeless people hired especially for the effort will canvas the nation’s skid rows and remote corners, seeking to count that legion of citizens who spend their nights in shelters and subway tunnels, flophouses and movie theaters, beaches, canyons and cardboard boxes.

The homeless count also marks the start of the 1990 national census for most of the country. Americans will begin receiving census forms in the mail late this week. The process of counting an estimated 250 million people will last through the summer as the Census Bureau attempts to visit every household that does not return a census form.

For the enumeration of the homeless, the Census Bureau has been recruiting an army of street people, offering them $7.50 an hour and the hope of longer employment if they do a good job.

If the Census Bureau meets its hiring goal, there will be 15,000 people--3,000 of them in California--knocking on shelter doors, peering down alleys, looking under bridges and waiting outside abandoned buildings for occupants to emerge at dawn Wednesday. The census takers will interview people who are in a mood to answer questions about themselves and merely note the presence of those who don’t want to talk or who are asleep.

In Orange County, about 300 “enumerators” will fan out across the county to tally the homeless. Outfitted in white vests that say “Census Taker” on the back, they will check scores of shelters as well as all the usual gathering spots, poking their flashlights under freeway overpasses, trolling along railroad tracks and hiking into the rural outback where migrant fieldworkers sometimes camp.

“We’re going to put everything we can into making the count as accurate as possible,” said Susan Oakson, coordinator for the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force, which is helping the U.S. Census Bureau in the effort. “But it’s clear there will be thousands of people missed. The homeless are the targets of harassment and violent crimes, so they try to be as invisible as possible. That will affect the results.”

While fewer than a dozen homeless people have been tapped to help with the count in Orange County, census officials in Los Angeles have been more successful in finding people down on their luck to help with the tally. Census Bureau officials decided to hire the homeless in an effort to build an effective bridge to the population they will attempt to count.

Brian, Doris, Gwen and J. C.--they didn’t want to reveal their last names--will be among about 300 census takers in Los Angeles working their way through Skid Row, the neighborhood that has been their home. The four are, by turns, optimistic and apprehensive about the prospect of interviewing their neighbors.

“People are going to talk to us because we are already down there and they know us,” said Gwen, a slim, middle-aged woman who said she lives on county relief payments and currently resides in a welfare hotel.

Gwen and the others will be taking part in the post-midnight phase of the homeless census. Between 6 and 10 p.m., other census takers will be visiting shelters and hotels. After midnight, teams of enumerators will seek out people who live outdoors.

As for the potential for danger, Gwen said: “I don’t know how it could be more dangerous than day-to-day living.”

But there are places where the three women in the group--Gwen, Doris and J. C.--said they would not go to count people.

“Crocker is a major dope street. So you don’t want to be there,” Gwen said.

“I won’t go on Crocker and I won’t go to MacArthur Park,” said Doris.

Most experts agree that there probably never has been anything approaching a definitive count of homeless people in America. Estimates have ranged from a few hundred thousand to 3 million or more.

Orange County has an estimated 10,000 homeless, Oakson said. In Los Angeles, Bob Vilmur, the city’s homeless projects coordinator, estimates that there are 35,000 people living in shelters, cheap hotels, other temporary quarters or on the street. The most recent study of the city’s Skid Row population, completed in 1987 by the Community Redevelopment Agency, reported that barely 1,000 people slept on the streets.

Moreover, there are disagreements over the definition of homeless--whether it should include people who are living temporarily with friends or relatives, or whether it should be limited to people who abide in shelters or on the streets.

Many of Orange County’s homeless, for example, are believed to camp in their cars or spend periods in inexpensive motels, Oakson said. When the money runs out, they return to a life without a roof over their heads.

“They might spend two days with a family friend, two days on the street, then two days in a car,” Oakson said. “It cyclical.”

In its tally of the homeless, the Census Bureau will not include people in jails or halfway houses or those who are doubled up with friends and family. Such people will be counted but as part of the general populace.

“What we’re going to get is a head count of street people and of people in shelters,” said Peter Bounpane, assistant director of the Census Bureau.

“The count will be as good as the assistance we get,” Bounpane said.

Doubts about the accuracy of the homeless census have led some homeless advocates, most notably Mitch Snyder of the Washington-based Community for Creative Non-Violence, to urge homeless people to boycott the census. Snyder argues that an undercount of homeless people will serve the needs of politicians who oppose spending more money on housing for the poor.

Members of Snyder’s organization have burned census forms, and Snyder has said his group plans to block census takers from entering some shelters.

Orange County homeless advocates have generally cooperated in the survey but understand the limitations.

“It’s a concern that these numbers will be used as the ultimate figure for the homeless,” Oakson said. “These numbers need to be balanced with a lot of other factors.”

At a census training session Monday in Los Angeles, where Gwen and her friends received their marching orders, most of the 12 trainees said they did not think the census would yield a complete count of homeless people.

“I doubt they will find everyone,” Brian said. “There are more homeless people than anyone ever imagined.”

“I know what I’d say if some stranger came up to me and started to ask me a bunch of questions,” Gwen said. “I’d tell ‘em to go to hell.”

Yet they vowed to do their best.

“How else are we going to get enough money for housing if we don’t know how many people there are that need it?” asked Doris. “If the count is not right, we’re going to lose on all levels--jobs, medical, everything.”

Times staff writers Eric Bailey and Jill Stewart and Times researcher Tracy Thomas contributed to this story.