Monitors Witnessed a Great Deal More Than Enumerators

The bonfires were visible a block away, silhouetting a dozen or so figures. Two women wearing tight shorts huddled with a man at the first fire. They laughed and talked as we approached.

“You guys don’t look familiar,” one of the women said, standing. “I don’t remember seeing you around here before.”

They hadn’t. Chuck, Ted and I were among 79 official census monitors, hired for $100 for the night to take a look at just what kind of job census takers were doing in finding the homeless. The idea was to hang out at a site where homeless people gather and see if the census people showed up to count us.

The evening had begun at 10 p.m. at First Methodist Church in downtown Los Angeles, where staffers and volunteers at Los Angeles’ Homeless Health Care Project gave us a two-hour orientation: “Observe, observe, observe. Count the number of people you see. Stay together for safety. Don’t approach the enumerators, but don’t avoid them.”

At 2 a.m., we hit the streets on the Census Bureau’s theory that anyone out there at that time--and who was not engaged in “commercial activity”--was homeless. Under the “commercial activity” clause, census takers had been instructed not to count drug dealers or prostitutes.

Seven pairs of monitors boarded our minibus and were deposited at some of the most desolate locations in a downtown industrial neighborhood. They walked through darkened alleys to abandoned warehouses, encampments beneath overpasses, cardboard box cities beneath parked tractor trailers.

One couple, Susan and Ron--the names in this story have all been changed--were dropped in an alley that looked too menacing for even police officers to enter, let alone census takers. Had that been my spot to monitor, I may not have even left the bus.

As it turned out, Chuck, Ted and I were given a spot near a 24-hour service station just south of downtown. The station was well-lit, but virtually the only light on the street behind it came from the bonfires.

We moved down the darkened street to the larger fire where three men openly shared a crack cocaine pipe. A silent man wearing an overcoat that seemed to have sprouted from his flesh methodically broke apart a wooden crate with a shiny ax.

He’d whack the crate, toss the wood on the fire and stare silently--at us.

“How ya doin’, man?” we asked, lamely, all the while keeping our eyes on the ax. He didn’t feel moved to tell us how he was doing, and we weren’t about to press.

We counted 28 people on the block. More than a dozen men and women were asleep on the pavement, bundled beneath blankets. But the encampment was never still, as others fed the fires and their drug habits.

We moved to the next block, where young women melted back into doorways as we approached. About 10 men around the corner openly hawked their drugs: “What you need? What you need?”

“I’m cool,” Ted said. “What you need?”

A man came out of the shadows with a portable stereo.

“Fifteen dollars, man. Fifteen dollars,” he yelled. “Can’t beat that. It’s gonna go fast.”

It didn’t.

We moved on down the block and around the corner where a hysterical woman was stopping traffic.

“Somebody save a woman’s life,” she sobbed. “Please.”

She wore a large towel on her head, socks but no shoes, shorts and a tattered blouse. Miraculously, no cars hit her. Several drivers even handed her money.

“The crack she’s gonna buy with that money ain’t gonna save her life,” an onlooker said.

After completing a circuit of several blocks, we looked back and noticed a group of six census takers who stood out with their white vests and large shoulder bags. They had gone through the block where we had just been. We missed them.

We had wanted to be on the block with the bonfires when they passed through, but “hanging out” there was out of the question.

“You don’t belong here,” one neatly dressed man told us matter-of-factly. He had just come out of a building and was looking for a group that had just left in a new BMW. “Don’t you know this is the pits? I’ve never seen you around here.”

Still, we went back to the bonfires, where I learned that the enumerators had talked to “everyone who was awake”--about seven people.

Four a.m. came slowly. Finally, we were back on the bus and picking up the other teams. Only three pairs had seen census takers, and only Susan and Ron--buried in their forbidding alley--had been interviewed.

Back at the church, the monitors completed forms asking what they had seen. The hours had taken their toll. I had just enough energy to go straight to my car, and I headed straight for home.