The Inns and Outs of the Census

Census workers are complaining that taking an accurate count at some Orange County residential motels has been one of their most difficult chores because of reluctant lodgers and the resistance of motel owners who seek to protect their customers’ privacy.

Yet, workers say, this population needs to be counted because Orange County’s receipt of much-needed federal aid to the poor depends upon a full count of residents who live in motels.

“These people need financial help,” said Thom Burgert, an Orange County census supervisor who specializes in counting the homeless and others who live in less traditional settings. “The only way for them to get help is to get counted.”

The effort is further complicated by the difficulty census enumerators have distinguishing between residential motels and standard ones. Although residents of a hotel might live there for months or years, census procedure says only motels accepting vouchers for emergency shelter can be officially counted as residential motels, officials said.

This makes the El Dorado Inn in Anaheim one of the few motels known to census workers where residents will be counted as homeless people. Lodgers of other motels will be counted as living in regular homes, which could affect funding to help such people.

On Sunday, a Times reporter accompanied a crew of census workers at the El Dorado Inn in Anaheim. After an hour of interviewing residents, managers asked workers and the reporter to leave.

Burgert said the El Dorado has resisted prior census attempts by not answering telephone calls from the census officials asking for population information and informing the motel management of upcoming visits. As a result, he said, census workers have only counted about 20% of the residents. The three-story inn is estimated to house 400 to 500 people.

Motel management declined to comment, but Burgert said the motel did not want census workers there because it had not been notified of the Sunday visit in advance. He said the management had been informed that census takers would arrive, but was not given a specific date.

By federal law, census workers are allowed on the property for their counts. And Burgert said he will return to the motel this week, once the disagreement is settled.

Officials must finish their count by week’s end, the deadline for enumerators to count those who did not return census forms mailed to them.

Like the residents of homeless shelters, drug rehabilitation centers and other facilities that house a transient population, the people who live in motels often are difficult to count because they live in fear of drawing attention to themselves, Burgert and other census officials said. Some are ashamed to be living in a motel; others worry that census takers will give information to the police or other agencies. Respondents often decline to give their names or list personal information. Some motel owners, knowing that their lodgers are leery of the census, try to protect them by refusing to give listings of their residents or return phone calls from census officials.

“Shelters and places like resident motels in some cases are very cooperative because they understand that this is important,” Burgert said. “But others believe they are protecting clients by not providing information on residents.”

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Motel dwellers had mixed opinions. Some residents refused to fill out census forms Sunday at the El Dorado, worried that their participation would draw increased attention.

“I don’t feel this will help us. The local government is trying to get us out of here already,” said a second-floor resident who identified himself as Angel but refused to talk to census workers. If city officials find out how many residents the motel has, he worried, they might move more quickly to evict them. He said he has lived at the motel for more than a month, after being forced to move from other motels. As a result, he said, he has felt the hostility against motel people for some time. “Hopefully things will change around here,” he said. “Hopefully, but I doubt it.”

His neighbor, Mark Long, was less cynical: “I guess it helps because there’s not enough affordable housing here, and the census will tell the city that it needs more.”

The 16-year-old said he has lived with his father and two younger siblings in a room with an adjoining kitchenette and bathroom for three years. The family’s $840-a-month rent includes utilities.

“We’ve looked around at other places where rent was lower, but when you figured in utilities, they weren’t cheaper,” Long said. The average price for an Orange County apartment is more than $1,000 per month.

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The lack of affordable housing has, in turn, led to an increase in the county’s homeless. In 1999, more than 14,000 Orange County residents lived on the streets or in temporary housing, an 18% increase over the previous year.

By law, residential hotels, many of which line Anaheim’s Lincoln Avenue, are counted in a special way by the census. The forms given to residents are easier to fill out, and the census enumerators are specially trained to interview hard-to-count populations.

Steve Fox is a census taker who has lived at the El Dorado for six years. He said the count was crucial to him and the motel, but that even as a neighbor, he finds it difficult to get some people to talk to him.

“Washington originally thought this was a Disneyland hotel,” he said, adding that the motel originally received a single census form standard for vacation hotels.

“We’re counting 500 people here who might not ordinarily get counted,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll get all 500. That’s a 10th of 1% of a congressional district.”