Enumerators Count on Homeless

Census takers and their helpers worked to count the homeless Tuesday, fanning out through Southern California soup kitchens, street corners, encampments, underpasses and beaches, a daunting brigade to a population accustomed to being ignored.

“It’s like voter registration, right?” asked Rebecca Singleton, 52, who sat with her belongings on skid row in downtown Los Angeles. A few blocks away, at the Union Rescue Mission, J.R. Brown filled out a form for an appreciative census taker who was among the thousands engaged in the same work across the nation in a count that began Monday and was set to end early this morning.

The homeless interviewed by reporters didn’t appear to understand policy reasons for being counted. Instead, they appreciated the incentives being offered--a crisp new blanket, a complimentary shaving and bath kit, free condoms and an extra night in an area shelter.

“God bless you,” said one elderly convert to a volunteer he had lambasted just a few minutes before.

The freebies were dangled in several outreach campaigns Tuesday night. At North Hollywood Park, L.A. Family Housing Corp. caseworkers Dennis O’Rourke and Maryza Gutierrez prepared a barbecue, but hot dogs, chips and sodas failed to attract many homeless.

“We just fed one,” O’Rourke said. “We were really disappointed.”

Gregory, 44, a homeless man at the park who refused to give his last name, said, “This time of night, people are trying to hide from the police. If they could come back on Saturday at the church down the street, they’d get about 75 people at a breakfast program.”

Spreading the word among the homeless about the census is something that should have started at least a week ago if not earlier, homeless advocates charged, especially in cities like Los Angeles, where many of the estimated 40,000 homeless on a given night live outdoors.

Census Bureau delays in finalizing policies and training workers left them with barely a weekend to prepare for the controversial, if not the most difficult, component of the decennial count, they added.

“We didn’t have a coordinated effort and it was very frustrating,” said John Horn, project director of the Trudy and Norman Louis Valley Shelter on Lankershim Boulevard. “We will hear this from every homeless advocate in town for the next 10 years. We didn’t learn anything from the 1990 census.”

Also, none of the $167 million spent on an exhaustive advertising campaign touting the census was used to target the homeless, some complained.

“The last time I checked, the homeless weren’t kicking back and watching prime time,” said Mike Neely, director of Homeless Outreach Program, a downtown Los Angeles agency.

At census headquarters in Suitland, Md., on Tuesday, officials were left scratching their heads at the frustration. Dates for the count had been locked in for months and the bureau has been working with homeless organizations on how to do the count for more than a year, said Edison Gore, assistant division chief for field programs. “We’ve certainly had numerous conferences with these groups.”

Gore conceded that worker training generally was limited to four hours, and mainly focused on conducting the survey and handling the forms. “I know it’s a challenge to get people acclimated to their jobs” in such a short time, he said, adding that he was “disappointed” by reports on how some census takers were faring.

Census Takers’ Trepidation

Outside the Union Rescue Mission, some workers’ discomfort in mixing with society’s outcasts was visible. Census takers Monday stayed close to the entrance and waited until homeless people passed nearby, rather than seeking out dozens more spread around the block.

One census taker said it was intimidating to walk through the gantlet of homeless people. “People are like, ‘I already did it,’ ‘Leave me alone,’ ” said the worker, who refused to be identified. “It’s hard.”

Other census takers worked the crowds with ease, including Hylen Burt, who counted people on the San Julian Street sidewalk behind the mission, a place where he too once was homeless. “Some of these [census takers] would be afraid of being downtown at night, and I live here,” he said Tuesday. “I know how to deal with people.”

“They’re very apprehensive down here,” agreed colleague Owen Wright, another census taker who used to be homeless. “They don’t know if you’re police, they don’t know if you’re going to turn them in to probation officers.

“That’s the advantage that we have coming out of this arena,” he said. “You know a lot of the people, you know how they think, you know how they work. You know how to deal with them on a one-to-one basis.”

The shelter counts, meanwhile, proved disappointing in some areas, including the San Fernando Valley and the Westside.

On Monday night in Sylmar, only 22 people showed up at the shelter housed in the cavernous armory just north of the Foothill Freeway. That may have been a predictor of an undercount that is likely to come. During the winter months, up to 125 people are housed there.

Nearly all those counted had been taken there by an L.A. Family Housing Corp. van that scoured Valley streets to find them.

Expecting only a hot meal and a cot, the homeless visitors were surprised to meet up with clipboard-toting census takers asking them questions about salary and race.

“They should have broadcast it somehow. Or they should have gotten the word out on TV or billboards or radio or the newspaper,” said Brian Tromblay, 38, who stayed at the armory with his girlfriend.

Tony Mashburn, 45, eagerly gobbled down a dinner of fried chicken and chili and said he wanted to get help at the Veterans Affairs center in Brentwood, but when he couldn’t get assistance, he took a bus to the Valley and found out about Monday’s shelter reopening.

“Usually I sleep on a park bench in Van Nuys,” said Debbie Rodriguez, 37, who said she was expecting a child with Tromblay. Many people, she said, camp in hidden spots behind buildings in downtown Van Nuys. In the winter, she added, people line up in front of the armory to get in.

That would have been the best time for an accurate count, advocates said.

“If they let our agency go out and count during those nights we would have had better numbers,” said a chagrined Joe Zuniga, who runs the Sylmar winter shelter program.

A Snapshot, Not a Count

Suggestions that census workers visit the shelters in February to find out where residents would be this month fell on deaf ears, said Horn, of the Valley Shelter.

Instead, Los Angeles County spent about $40,000 to reopen all its winter shelters--about 24 sites--just for Monday night’s count, said Natalie Profant of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

But the homeless census had to be limited to one short period to reduce double counting, the bureau’s Gore said.

He and other federal officials stressed that the effort is only a snapshot, not a true count, and merely one factor in deciding how funds get allocated, including a $1-billion “Continuum of Care” for the homeless. The program provides emergency shelters and outreach, transitional housing, job training, mental health and domestic violence counseling services.

“We have no particular plans to use the homeless count, separate from the overall census count,” said Fred Karnas, deputy assistant secretary for special needs programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But he and others also acknowledge that the bigger the count, the more the overall poverty total will rise, increasing the chances of more money for the poor.

Gore said he was optimistic that the homeless count would be an improvement over the criticized one in 1990, especially since census takers were visiting soup kitchens, mobile food vans, transitional shelters and a host of other sites not included in the earlier census. In addition, “Be counted” questionnaires will be available at health clinics, clothing distribution centers and other places frequented by the homeless for them to send in after the national survey period formally ends this morning.

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Times staff writers Fred Alvarez, Johnathon E. Briggs, Bobby Cuza, David Haldane, Willoughby Mariano and Monte Morin contributed to this story.