Helping the Homeless by Counting Them

Twelve hours of steady rain have turned the intersection of 8th and Soto streets into a sloppy soup of urban grime.

It’s rush hour in Boyle Heights and most drivers don’t notice the traffic on foot--the homeless crossing from corner to corner, hustling change, scoring drugs, stepping into a fast food restaurant.

But homeless outreach worker Amanda Sosa sees them Thursday night and offers a sandwich, maybe a personal hygiene kit, and a pitch: “Could you answer some questions on this survey?”

Many of the street people readily accept Sosa’s offer, providing information that will help the city figure out ways to count the hidden homeless that don’t show up in shelters or soup kitchens.

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From 5 p.m. to midnight Thursday, teams of outreach workers like Sosa hit five census tracts across Los Angeles, scrambling along freeway embankments, poking flashlights under bushes and scanning alleys and parks. The counters gathered information that will be presented in a report to the U.S. Census Bureau as early as next month.

The one-night count--timed to simulate next March’s census--was designed by homeless advocates and the city to prevent a repeat of the 1990 census, where many street people were not counted.

City officials and social service advocates are concerned an undercount could mean lost federal funding for their programs.

The 1990 census tallied 7,706 homeless people in Los Angeles. But several advocacy groups thought the totals should have been much larger.

A 1991 report compiled by the Shelter Partnership, a support organization for shelters and homeless programs, estimated at least 36,800 and possibly as many as 59,100 people were homeless each night in Los Angeles County. More than half were in the city of Los Angeles, the study found.

The 1990 census figures for Los Angeles County, however, were 11,790.

“The big problem with the census is that it is designed around the idea that people have an address,” said Dave Ely, a demographic research consultant for the city.

Thursday’s city count will try to determine the permanence of various encampments, Ely said.

Preliminary numbers from the test count will not be available until next week, said Jan Perry, executive director for the city’s Census 2000 Outreach project.

In Van Nuys, Melle Atayde, an L.A. Family Housing Corp. shelter worker who helped with the count, said some street people were spooked because the project seemed connected to the government.

Several encampments were found in Van Nuys, she said. But most were smaller sites consisting of just one person. Their locations along railroad tracks, in abandoned vehicles and under bushes were sketched on maps to assist the census 2000 enumerators.

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In Boyle Heights, 50 feet above the din of the Golden State Freeway, Larry, 44, and his partner Mary, 43, share a tidy home fashioned from tarps that protect their mattress, a tiny black-and-white TV powered by a car battery, and shelves of pots, pans and clothes.

They have been on the streets 13 years, Mary said, sometimes staying in locations for years at a time.

To get to the couple’s hideaway, outreach workers scaled a freeway fence and carefully traversed a steep freeway embankment, thick with brush.

Larry and Mary have three cats and a dog, precious companions that could prevent them from being counted in the official census, because shelters don’t accept pets.

“A lot of people forget about the homeless,” Larry said. “I believe this is a good thing,” he added, referring to the city count.

While city officials worry that federal funding is at stake if the homeless are undercounted, others say the census was never designed to identify street people.

“What you are going to find in one night is not going to be everybody by a long shot,” said Martha Burt, program director for the social services research program at the Urban Institute in Washington.

Burt said she thinks it may be difficult to improve census-taking procedures. But the Census Bureau’s Bettye Moohn, chief of the field programs branch, said L.A.’s demonstration project may help identify areas for census enumerators.

The Census Bureau has already revamped its method of counting encampments. During last year’s dress rehearsal, only sites of 15 or more people were noted. In 2000, census officials said, all will be tallied regardless of size.

At Hollenbeck Park on Thursday night, one such site was counted by outreach workers. Two men and a woman politely answered the survey, while a fourth person remained huddled under blankets, not stirring.

Under a roofed cement deck overlooking the lake, outreach worker Sosa spoke with one Latino man, perhaps in his early 50s. His neat appearance--unwrinkled slacks, leather jacket and clean blue shirt--gave no hint that he was out on the streets.

“He needs a referral,” Sosa said to a co-worker after finishing the survey. Perhaps this man might be open to a shelter or other services, she thought.

Connie, who said she was a Tucson native, also shared the deck as living quarters. Happy to receive some hand cream and shower gel, Connie was dressed neatly in jeans and a black leather jacket. She’s been homeless since she lost her job a year ago.

“It’s not too bad,” she said of her makeshift mattress of cardboard mats.

With its lake in the background and illuminated fountains, the setting seemed peaceful and quiet.

To keep it that way, Mike Garcia, an AIDS outreach supervisor for the service organization Bienestar, had done some advance prep work.

A few minutes ahead of the team, Garcia had stopped by a local gang member’s house to give a heads-up that volunteers, not rival gang members, would be walking through the park.

“It’s like a dog-eat-dog world,” said Johnny Perez, who two years ago was strung out on heroin, living on the streets.

Now working for Hosea, an Alhambra service agency that assists gang members, drug addicts and the homeless, Perez said he can approach the homeless because he knows their struggle.

“You find a lot of them by themselves,” he said. “They are scared and they isolate themselves.”

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The Hidden Population

Five city census tracts were selected by homeless assistance groups and the city of Los Angeles for Thursday night’s count. The tracts were in Van Nuys, Boyle Heights, Pico-Union, Venice and Watts.

Teams of shelter workers, many of them formerly homeless, searched through streets, alleys and parks, under bridges and along freeways from 5 p.m. to midnight to survey the homeless. The teams asked the homeless where they usually stay, how they came to be homeless and if they used shelter services.

The teams were accompanied by Los Angeles Police Department officers, who patrolled the census areas during the count. No incidents were reported.

After results are compiled, a report will be sent to the Census Bureau.