Westside Undercounted in Census, Officials Charge

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.

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.

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

The claims lend weight to 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.

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.