Official Says Problems Hurt Homeless Count

The Census Bureau team that counted the homeless in Ventura County was short of needed Spanish-speaking workers and failed to visit all of the county’s shelters and other homeless hangouts, the bureau’s regional director acknowledged Friday.

But John Reeder, the bureau’s California regional director, said census takers ventured back onto the streets on Tuesday and Thursday nights to complete the canvassing of all 108 places where the county’s homeless people are known to stay.

“We do have a body count and that’s the important thing,” Reeder said. “We missed data on some individuals, such as educational attainment and age. But we counted all of the people we should have.”

Reeder’s announcement came a day after he audited the results of the Census Bureau’s March 20 dawn-to-dusk sweep for Ventura County’s homeless people.

He took the unusual step of auditing the Ventura office after Supervisor Madge L. Schaefer wrote him a letter complaining that the effort to count the homeless population was “inexcusably mismanaged.”

In an interview Friday, Reeder said he agreed with Schaefer that bureau managers had missed some homeless locations and failed to provide a sufficient number of bilingual workers.

“We did not have enough Spanish-speaking census takers and that prevented us from getting some data,” he said. “We had some bilingual people. If we had allocated them properly, we would have been better off. But it would have helped if we had more.”

Schaefer said she appreciated Reeder’s prompt response to her complaint. “With $200 riding on every person counted in Ventura County, I had to be certain that we were counted accurately,” she said in a statement. Schaefer figures that each person counted will bring the county $200 a year in federal and state aid programs that are allocated by population.

Meanwhile, as many as 7,000 county households have not received census questionnaires because clerks in the bureau’s Ventura office are backed up in adding last-minute addresses to the computer.

“We do have a backlog, but we hope that all will be mailed out by the 11th of April,” said Geary-Ellen Williams, district office manager for Ventura County.

The new addresses come from a last-minute check of the Census Bureau’s address list against a similar list held by the U.S. Postal Service. Most of the new addresses come from new development, such as Wood Ranch in Simi Valley, Williams said.

The Census Bureau is encouraging the remainder of the county’s 220,000 households to return their questionnaires by April 1. Those who have not received a questionnaire are encouraged to call the bureau’s toll-free number, (800) 999-1990.

On Friday, Reeder stressed that there is “no animosity between the Census Bureau and Madge Schaefer and the Board of Supervisors.”

Yet, earlier this week, he forwarded Schaefer’s letter to Census Bureau lawyers in Washington to determine whether Schaefer had violated federal confidentiality laws.

In her letter that she made public, Schaefer named three homeless shelters visited by census takers. As a sworn “cultural agent,” she is prohibited by law from revealing any census data. A violation of the confidentiality law is punishable by up to five years in prison.

Schaefer has pointed out that Randy E. Metcalf, the bureau’s regional supervisor, also released the same information by inviting reporters and photographers to follow him to the same shelters during the all-night sweep March 20.

“We feel strongly about abiding by the law that says all census information will be kept confidential,” Reeder said. “People basically trust the Census Bureau and we want to keep that trust.”

“Now Randy Metcalf has been accused of things and we are looking at that too,” he said.