Crackdown on W. Hollywood Homeless May Affect Census
A recent crackdown in West Hollywood has driven many homeless people outside the city’s borders just before the 1990 Census and will probably lower the city’s population by several hundred residents, officials said this week.
The decline in the city’s homeless population, which at one time was estimated to be as high as 500, is the result of the City Council’s enactment of an ordinance that prohibits sleeping in the city parks and its recent decision to evict from Plummer Park a nonprofit feeding program that provided meals for more than 150 transients a day.
“There are not going to be many homeless people here any more,” said Sue Wilcox, a homeless specialist for the city. “They are no longer in the city because many have been chased across the border (into) Los Angeles.”
Wilcox added that a decision by Los Angeles County officials to open county shelters this week while the census workers count the homeless was likely to draw additional homeless people out of West Hollywood for the census. “Those who are bused to the county shelters will not be considered West Hollywood residents,” she said.
The result, she said, is that West Hollywood’s official homeless count is likely to be in the dozens rather than the hundreds.
The drop will add to the city’s financial woes, because many state and federal programs allocate money to municipalities according to their population. West Hollywood, for example, expects to lose an estimated $1.5 million in state revenues derived from gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes and vehicle registration fees once the 1990 census is tabulated, said Ray Randolph, the city’s finance administrator. The city receives $51 for each resident from these sources.
Since incorporation in 1984, he said, West Hollywood has been receiving an outsize share of such state revenues. Because West Hollywood had no 1980 Census figures on which to base these allocations, he said, figures were set by a formula derived from the number of registered voters.
West Hollywood, however, has an unusually high percentage of voters because it has many one-person households and very few children. These formulas had the effect of treating the city as if its population were about 68,000; city officials estimate the population at about 38,000.
City officials said they could have saved money by postponing the crackdown on the homeless until after the Census, but decided to proceed anyway. The eviction of the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition from Plummer Park and the enactment of the sleeping ban were in response to complaints from residents that the concentration of homeless in West Hollywood had made the parks unsafe and unsanitary. The food coalition now distributes its food from a location in Hollywood.
“The census figures will certainly impact the amount of funding the city receives from the state,” said Lloyd Long, the city’s director of human services. “But the council made it a priority to have the parks more accessible to the community, and I don’t think that could have waited.”
Wilcox, the city’s homeless coordinator, agreed. “The problem is you can’t have your cake and eat it too. . . . You can’t have the numbers for the funding and move the people out of the areas at the same time,” she said.
