Estimate of Homeless in L.A. County Up Sharply : Poverty: Director of study for support group puts their numbers at 100,000 to 160,000. A county official disputes those figures.

Challenging long-time estimates that there are 50,000 to 70,000 homeless in Los Angeles County, a nonprofit group Thursday released a study, based for the first time on local government welfare statistics, that puts the population at 100,000 to 160,000.

Paul S. Tepper, an official of Shelter Partnership, a well-known technical support group for shelters and homeless programs, said the new figures “are far in excess of what we’ve seen before.”

The study, which used local welfare statistics to gauge homelessness, is sure to add heat to a long-simmering controversy over the true number of homeless, a population whose estimated size swells and ebbs depending on the source. Within hours Thursday, one Skid Row organization that believes homeless figures already are inflated, questioned the conclusions in the new study.

Moreover, an attempt by the U.S. Census Bureau to count the homeless this year has been criticized for missing too many shelters. Data from that effort will not be available for two years.

Tepper, who directed the study for Shelter Partnership, said the information was drawn from state and county welfare documents for the 1988-89 fiscal year.

He claimed that the study was the first local effort to depart from the past practice of estimating the number of homeless based on lines at shelters, the overall poverty rate and other unscientific gauges. Tepper said such methods have been used to arrive at the commonly used estimate of 50,000 to 70,000 homeless.

The Shelter Partnership study found that:

* A total of 14,248 households in Los Angeles County received special welfare assistance granted only to homeless families, according to statistics from the state Department of Social Services. Given an average size of 3.07 persons per poor family in Los Angeles, the program assisted more than 43,700 homeless people.

* In addition, of 117,226 individuals who applied for General Relief welfare for single people, an estimated 74,907 were homeless. The figure is derived from an internal Los Angeles County study in 1987 that found that 64% of General Relief welfare applicants are homeless, and it has been adjusted to avoid counting any repeat applicants.

But a county official questioned that figure, saying: “We feel the homeless were over-sampled when we (arrived at) 64%, because it was a sample based on only one month.” Ann Jankowski, division chief of General Relief Planning, said she “feels solid in saying” that 50% of General Relief applicants are homeless--a percentage that would still translate into about 58,500 homeless individuals.

* The overall count also included 10,000 homeless runaways, who are not served by homeless family programs or General Relief and are included in neither figure. The runaway population was first identified in an independent 1981 study by United Way, but is believed to have grown since then.

Tepper stressed that his group has “no hard figures” for thousands of homeless people who do not participate in government programs, such as independent-minded street people and illegal immigrants. For example, he said a 1986 county study showed that nearly 25% of the homeless people on Skid Row had never applied for General Relief.

The group used estimates to account for these homeless.

Jim Lewis, chaplain at Skid Row’s Los Angeles Mission, expressed concern over how Tepper’s data was collected, saying: “That’s a wide range, 100,000 to 150,000. If people are counting, they are not counting very accurately.”

The Los Angeles Mission has long held that even the 50,000 figure is inflated by housing advocates seeking funding.

Lewis said if the figures are close they probably include “the hidden homeless” who are living temporarily with family members or friends. “We just aren’t seeing that kind of number on the streets,” he said.

Tepper said the figure does not include the hidden homeless.

Shelter Partnership President Ann Reiss Lane, speaking at a downtown press conference, blamed the huge homeless population on a sharp increase in poverty in Los Angeles, coupled with a severe shortage of affordable housing. Los Angeles’ poverty rate is above the national average and is climbing, according to many economists.

Lane, who is also president of the Los Angeles Board of Fire Commissioners, said local and state governments “have to put far more effort” into housing and anti-poverty programs to head off a deeper crisis.

She said she hopes elected officials “are horrified (by the study). That would be my greatest wish.”

The study also brought a swift response from state Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), who called the figures “shocking” and urged voter approval of Proposition 107 on the June ballot.

Proposition 107 would provide $150 million for emergency shelters, new and rehabilitated rental housing, and first-time home-buyer loans.

“The homeless crisis is of catastrophic proportions and it is growing,” Roberti warned. “If a natural disaster had caused this homelessness, it would be a major catastrophe. And yet many homeless shelters are cutting back their services rather than expanding” due to lack of funds, he said.

Jankowski, the county spokeswoman, said her office “is going to have to analyze their methods before we comment” on the overall findings.