THE CENSUS BEGINS: COUNTING THE HOMELESS : FACTS ABOUT THE COUNT

Here’s a look at Tuesday’s effort to count the nation’s homeless: Who: About 15,000 Census Bureau workers visit an estimated 11,000 shelters and an equal number of identified street locations.

What: They interview homeless people if possible, and at the very least count them for inclusion with all other Americans in the 1990 Census. This special homeless count is costing about $2.7 million.

When: From 6 p.m. to midnight enumerators visit shelters and low-cost hotels and motels. From 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. they go to predetermined street and other outdoor sites where the homeless are known to congregate. From 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. they are outside abandoned buildings to count those coming out.

Where: The effort includes every city of 50,000 or more residents and smaller towns and rural areas where local officials reported having a homeless population.

Why: Homelessness has become an increasingly noticed problem in America, but there are no good statistics showing the extent. Estimates of the number of homeless vary from 250,000 to 3 million.

Results: The effort is to find out how many people are homeless. But the bureau will not try to define that term. Instead, it will simply report finding so many people on the streets, so many in shelters or hotels, so many doubled up in apartments, etc. The results will be part of the general national population and housing analysis, expected to published in late 1991.