THE CENSUS BEGINS: COUNTING THE HOMELESS : Head-Counters Get a Mixed Reaction From the Down-and-Out
U.S. census workers searched for the homeless in Los Angeles’ ritziest neighborhoods and in its most dreadful flophouses Tuesday night, and they found the homeless to be a skeptical, elusive and not always willing bunch.
On Skid Row, poverty-stricken families were bedding down for the night and huge lines of the disowned and dysfunctional sat on sidewalks as $7-an-hour census workers hit the streets.
One young mother, clutching two tiny girls in pigtails, joined 1,000 others in a blocks-long line for free food and insulating “space blankets” at the Homeless Outreach Project. She did not know that a census was under way in America.
“Hey, that sounds like a good idea, but why are they giving us out space blankets when we can’t even find a place for children to use a bathroom down here?” she said, disappearing with the children into an alleyway.
At the Los Angeles Mission, Jackie Dunbar, 32, homeless for three years, entered the shelter at 7 p.m. “Is there anything to eat?” she asked. When a census taker approached the rail-thin woman, she fled out the door and disappeared.
A few blocks away, Arelio Ramos, 47, sat in the Union Rescue Mission, holding all his possessions in a small blue duffel bag. Keeping a firm grip on the bag, he said: “We are human beings. Maybe the census will let the rich people out there with nice homes and cars know we exist. Maybe it will bring some change.”
But at the Salvation Army shelter in an industrial sector of Bell, where the homeless took showers, played pool and enjoyed free bacon sandwiches and instant noodles, they were less than enamored of the count.
“I think it’s a crock,” said Charles Davey Boynes Jr., 29, who said he has been homeless for 1 1/2 years. “The government doesn’t want to help the people. We’ve been neglected all this time and now what’s the census going to do to help us?”
Still others became overnight activists, imploring their fellow homeless to get involved.
A 31-year-old homeless man at the West Los Angeles armory said he’d been promoting the census to vagrants and the homeless along the beachfront in Santa Monica.
“They need to know how many there are of us, so those of us who want to get off the streets can get the help we need,” said the man, who declined to identify himself. “A lot of them are scared. They think it’s going to be turned over to the police. . . . Everybody’s going to be hiding.”
Confusion was expected in the first comprehensive count of the homeless since the United States began keeping census records in 1790--and there was confusion aplenty in Southern California.
At the Ventura County Rescue Mission, a religious emergency shelter for single men in Oxnard, three census workers--two elderly white men and one elderly white woman--spoke no Spanish but had to interview a predominantly Latino crowd.
As the congregation sang spiritual hymns, census workers walked up and down the pews asking if anyone spoke English. Time after time, they were waved away by one wagging finger after another.
“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Ventura County Supervisor Madge Schaefer, who donned a white Census Bureau smock to supervise the count. An interpreter was eventually summoned.
The city of Los Angeles had to make last-minute changes after Mayor Tom Bradley learned that a huge area of South-Central was left out of the planned count.
He ordered city vans to pick up the homeless and take them to a local church to be counted, but it was not clear whether the plan would work.
“We are reaching out to people on the streets,” said Bob Vilmur, the city’s homeless coordinator.
As the evening wore on, the sheer size of the job of counting the homeless began to sink in. Fifty-thousand people are believed to be homeless in Los Angeles County alone.
At the Culver City armory, the 15 census takers outnumbered the 10 homeless people who showed up, and one of them, a woman, refused to be counted.
“Forget it, Charlie,” she barked. “You’re wasting the taxpayers’ money.”
Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Bettina Boxall, Irene Chang, Clay Evans, Michele Fuetsch, Tina Griego, George Hatch, Nancy Hill-Holtzman, Shawn Hubler, Tracy Kaplan, Marc Lacey, Jeordan Legon, Josh Meyer, Dean Murphy and Janet Rae-Dupree.
