Cities Say Census Shortchanged Them : Population: Four Westside cities say they have more households than the Census Bureau’s preliminary findings indicate. West Hollywood claims a 20% discrepancy.

The 1990 Census missed more than 7,000 houses, condominiums and apartments in West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Culver City and Beverly Hills, officials of the four Westside cities said last week.

The discrepancy was greatest in West Hollywood, where city officials claimed that the head count failed to find 4,637 units--about one household for every five tabulated by the census, a discrepancy of 20%.

Santa Monica officials reported 2,300 households were missed by the census--a discrepancy of about 5%.

The claims by the two cities lend weight to the concerns local elected officials and academic specialists raised about the Census Bureau’s preliminary findings, which were released last month. Those figures showed that the population for the two Westside cities declined during the 1980s, although the number of residents in Los Angeles County as a whole soared by 17%.

In the other two Westside cities, Culver City officials claimed an undercount of 499 housing units--a 3% discrepancy with the census figure--and Beverly Hills officials reported that a mere 23 housing units were missed, which is a statistically insignificant amount.

At Los Angeles City Hall, Assistant City Atty. Jessica Heinz said that, although separate figures for the Los Angeles portion of Westside were not immediately available, city officials believe nearly 50,000 dwellings were overlooked citywide--a discrepancy with the census count of about 4%. The Westside makes up about a third of the city’s population.

Although the cities did not attempt to match the government’s door-to-door head count of people, their efforts are expected to pay off in higher population totals in any cases where the Census Bureau confirms that significant numbers of households were overlooked.

In coming months, the Census Bureau will recheck some of the areas where cities reported the greatest shortfalls, a federal spokesman said.

The discrepancies are hardly academic because the census will determine allocations of about $60 per person in federal and state tax funds, not to mention political clout in the reapportioned Legislature and in Congress.

If the Census Bureau stands by its numbers, the difference in funding to a local government, such as Culver City, would be “probably equivalent to three police officers, and that’s certainly significant to the community,” said Bob Norquist, an assistant to the city’s chief administrative officer.

Culver City has a yearly budget of about $70 million and enough money on hand to keep all its police officers, but “every little bit helps,” Norquist said.

Although he would not comment on complaints from individual cities, Steve Alnwick, geographic coordinator for the Los Angeles Regional Census Center, said the government plans to send out investigators to check the greatest discrepancies.

The bureau will look for houses, apartments or condos it may have missed and try to determine who was living there on April 1, Census Day. “We’d check the (census) block with the highest difference and work our way down within each city,” Alnwick said.

In a letter to Alnwick, West Hollywood Mayor John Heilman said a random mail survey of 1,000 residents in late July showed that nearly 11% of the city’s residents were not counted as part of the census.

West Hollywood officials cited two reasons for the possible discrepancy between their city’s population and the Census Bureau’s preliminary figures.

Hundreds of structures with multiple dwellings have been built in West Hollywood in the past decade, most of which replaced single-family homes or duplexes, said planning official John Jakupcak. Census counters may have sent only one census form to an address that now is the site of several households.

Also, Heilman said that during the census count, “We received numerous requests for assistance from Russian-speaking residents. We are concerned that many of our Russian-speaking residents were not accurately counted, not only because of language barriers, but also because of cultural barriers which make some of these immigrants suspicious of governmental employees,” he said.

According to figures released last month, the Census Bureau found 85,880 residents in Santa Monica, down 3% from the 1980 count of 88,314 and 12.8% below the 96,891 predicted by the California Department of Finance, which comes up with its own estimates every year, based on birth and death records, drivers’ licenses, and construction and demolition permits.

The Census Bureau reported 35,121 residents in West Hollywood, down 2% from the 1980 total of 35,703 and 9.4% below the state’s estimate of 38,436.

For Culver City, the Census Bureau found 38,528 people, up 1% from 38,139 in 1980. The state’s estimate for Culver City in 1990 was significantly higher--41,197, a difference of 6.9%

In Beverly Hills, the Census Bureau reported 31,783 residents, a 2% drop from the 1980 total of 32,367 and 7.9% less than the state’s prediction of 34,294.

The 1990 census found 3,420,235 people in the city of Los Angeles, up 15% from 2,966,850 in 1980. The state’s estimate for Los Angeles was 3,433,561, a difference of less than 1%.

Countywide, the Census Bureau reported a population total of 8,719,699, a 17% increase over the 7,477,503 inhabitants counted 10 years ago. The state’s estimate for 1990 was 8,769,944, also a difference of less than 1%.

CENSUS COUNT VS. CITY ESTIMATES

A preliminary report issued by the Census Bureau in August undercounted, in some cases significantly, the number of housing units in Westside cities and Los Angeles, local officials claim.

Their reports, which were sent to Washington, D.C., last week, did not attempt to challenge the federal government’s population figures. Instead, local governments looked at building and demolition records, utility hook-ups and other sources to check the Census Bureau’s count of houses, apartments and condominiums.

In coming months, the bureau will recheck some of the areas where cities reported the greatest discrepancies, a federal spokesman said.

How city Census count Estimate counts differs City of housing units by city in number Beverly Hills 15,707 15,730 23 Culver City 16,888 17,387 499 Los Angeles 1,292,228 1,341,741 49,513 Santa Monica 47,569 49,869 2,300 West Hollywood 23,379 28,016 4,637

How city count differs City in Percent Beverly Hills 0% Culver City 3% Los Angeles 4% Santa Monica 5% West Hollywood 20%