Cities Soften Their Undercount Charges : Census: Los Angeles and other metropolitan areas, however, still contend that there are serious errors. Orange County has raised no challenges.

After complaining that preliminary 1990 census figures grossly underestimated the growth of their populations over the past decade, officials in many big cities--including Los Angeles--say that census counts may not be quite as far off as the critics originally alleged.

Nonetheless, officials in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and other metropolitan areas continue to say that there were serious errors in the Census Bureau’s population count, which could cost local governments seats in Congress and hundreds of millions of dollars in federal assistance.

In an official challenge forwarded to Washington late Monday, Los Angeles officials said they had turned up 49,513 more dwellings than the 1.3 million units counted by the Census Bureau. While that difference of 3.8% could translate into thousands of people and millions of dollars in government aid, the figure is well below the 10% housing underestimate Los Angeles officials had originally predicted.

As it stands, the Census Bureau has put the city’s 1990 population at 3.42 million--15% above the 1980 level. But the challenge over housing units, when translated into residents, could bring that figure up by 123,783--a total about equal to the population of Pasadena.

“The possibility of missing anyone who resides in the Los Angeles area can have a devastating impact on the federal funds we may receive to provide needed city services,” Mayor Tom Bradley said from Frankfurt, West Germany, while on a mission to promote tourism.

During the remainder of this week, cities and towns across the country will be scurrying to complete formal responses to the initial census figures.

In Orange County, no governmental agency has so far challenged any of the preliminary census counts.

After the 1980 census, Santa Ana officials complained that upwards of 50,000 residents--most of them Latino newcomers living in the shadows of society--were left uncounted. But the city launched a massive effort to encourage residents to cooperate with the census, and officials say the 1990 count practically exceeded their expectations.

William Bellamy, U.S. Bureau of the Census district director in Orange County, said other large cities in Orange County also have appeared satisfied with the Census Bureau’s preliminary counts. The only city in Orange County that has indicated it was taking a hard, second look at the preliminary figures is Westminster, but no challenge has yet been mounted by that city, Bellamy said.

By the end of last week the Census Bureau had received formal responses from 4,341, or 11%, of all local governments, but not all have formally challenged the census numbers.

“We’ve actually received a lot of letters here accepting our counts, telling us we were right in the ball park,” said Denise Smith, an official in the Census Bureau’s regional office that covers all of New England and Upstate New York.

In Houston, a week before the deadline, officials were finding the local review of housing units much closer to the census count than they had expected. Nonetheless, city officials were challenging the Census Bureau’s contention that Houston has 1.61 million residents and essentially has not grown since 1980.

In Philadelphia, officials were disturbed but not surprised by the census conclusion that population has eroded over the past decade, with city dwellers fleeing in ever-larger numbers to the suburbs. While officials there thought the census count was off, they also acknowledged that their numbers were not as different as they had thought. Based on earlier estimates, city officials said the census had overlooked as many as 97,000 dwellings. In fact, the post-census review of building permits and other records showed that the census undercount was closer to 67,000 units, said Barbara J. Kaplan, executive director of the city Planning Commission.

In a few places, officials continued to say the numbers would be as bad--and in some cases, worse--than anticipated. In Chicago, a week before the deadline, the difference between the census count and the local review was “large and growing larger,” said Susan Weed, a community development demographer.

New York’s deadline is also later this week, but officials there continued to be outspoken in their criticism of the preliminary census count of 600,000 fewer residents than the city had a decade ago--a situation that officials say is preposterous, given their large homeless population and the city’s economic growth.

At a hearing in Washington last week, Barbara Everitt Bryant, the director of the Census Bureau, responded sharply to the New York officials in her first public statement since the agency released the preliminary 1990 counts last month.

If New York’s population did not drop, she said at the hearing, “Why did the school enrollment drop by 54,000? Why do the moving vans show more people going out than coming in?”

The bureau has until mid-October to assess the challenges, at which time it will begin preparing a final gross count of the population, due on the President’s desk by Dec. 31.

While these operations and last-minute efforts are under way to correct the preliminary census count of 245.8 million, census statisticians will be evaluating what is known as the post-enumeration survey, a statistical survey analyzing how well the regular census did in finding such hard-to-count residents as immigrants and inner-city residents.

Los Angeles, New York and other cities and states, along with civic and civil rights groups, filed a lawsuit after the 1980 census seeking to force a statistical correction of the 1990 census based on this study. Although the lawsuit is pending, the commerce department did agree to conduct the study to make an adjustment possible, if the Secretary of Commerce decides it is necessary.