Officials Seek Accurate Tally of Homeless

A recent count of the homeless in six Los Angeles census tracts identified 192 people--192 more homeless people than were found nearly 10 years ago in five of those same tracts.

The “practice run” for next year’s census was merely one snapshot of a bigger, more complex portrait. But government officials and homeless advocates said Wednesday that it proves that the hidden homeless who are not in shelters or on skid row are one of the biggest challenges facing the 2000 census.

Capturing enough of those snapshots to assemble an accurate portrait is a mind-numbing task for the U.S. Census Bureau, officials said.

“This county is enormous,” said Natalie Profant of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. “The Census Bureau needs all the help it can get.”

The city and social service agencies are hard-pressed to prevent a repeat of the 1990 census, the first time that a count of street homeless was attempted.

That census tallied 7,706 homeless in the city of Los Angeles and 11,790 countywide. But a 1991 report by the Shelter Partnership, a support organization for shelters and homeless programs, estimated that at least 36,800 people--and possibly as many as 59,100--were homeless each night in the county, more than half of them in the city.

The acknowledged undercount of the homeless resulted in lost funding for social services, shelters and other agencies that provide services, advocates said.

The one-night March demonstration project, organized by city and social service agencies, sent outreach workers into parks, freeway embankments, alleys and other areas to survey the homeless from 5 p.m. to midnight.

From that survey, the report listed several findings that may improve next year’s tally:

* Conduct a count during hours that will find the largest number of homeless, at a time when they would be most inclined to fill out the surveys that ask about income, race, education and other issues. Much of the 1990 street count occurred between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., a disruptive hour for any person, experts said.

* Try to coordinate the count on a day in March that all city shelters are still open. Their participation can help obtain an accurate count.

* Continue to hire more homeless service agency workers, as well as the homeless, who are better able to locate hard-to-find encampments and other obscure locations that may frighten off most census workers.

* Use incentives, such as hygiene and personal care products, sack lunches and other items to coax street people to make initial contact with census workers.

At Wednesday’s meeting, several officials with the homeless services authority and city census committee suggested that outside funding--perhaps from the city or federal government--be used to hire more census counters from the social service agencies and homeless.

John Reeder, regional director of the U.S. Census Bureau, said next year’s homeless street count will not be scheduled at such an early hour, but it was up to the national office to determine if outside funding could be used to pay for more census workers.

All census enumerators must pass security checks, and liability concerns may preclude the bureau from using supplemental workers, he said. “The Census Bureau will be finishing its formal plan so we’ll know what we can do,” he said.

The incentives idea might work in next year’s census if outside agencies or a company donated the goods, he said.