Value of Homeless Recount Disputed

New efforts to count Los Angeles County’s homeless population are underway on the streets and in the courts, with possibly millions of dollars at stake.

How many homeless people inhabit the area’s sidewalks, parks, cars, freeway underpasses and shelters has long been a contentious question. The most widely used calculation dates from a decade ago -- 84,000 people on any given night, with 40,000 in the city of Los Angeles alone, including those in emergency and other short-term shelters.

Those figures were based on applications for government assistance for the homeless rather than on a canvass and were formulated by the Shelter Partnership, a nonprofit group that offers research and resources to providers of services to the homeless.

Although its backers say that figure is conservative, others feel it is inflated. Many agree that the issue deserves new study.

Several downtown missions have banded together to undertake a count of skid row denizens. The county’s key agency for the homeless has put out a bid for a wider canvass and is installing a new computer system to help track homeless people who use its services. And the city of Los Angeles is suing the U.S. Census Bureau to get data from the 2000 count.

The stakes are high. The city estimates that it lost $160 million in federal and state funds because the homeless population had been undercounted in the 1990 census. Officials say that determining the number and location of homeless people is also important for delivering aid such as emergency beds and food.

But the efficacy of counting the homeless and what such a count might reveal are engendering disagreement among advocates. Some argue that a new count is needed because the 84,000 figure is unrealistic and is used by agencies to maintain government funding. Others assert that there can never be a precise count of a population that is, by nature, transient and elusive, and that such efforts are a waste of money.

Mitchell Netburn is executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, formed by the city and county to coordinate services for the homeless and to distribute federal and state funds. He agreed that focusing on numbers can obscure more important needs, but he said there is increasing pressure on cities to show that they are reducing the numbers of chronically homeless or risk losing federal funds.

“The longer we go without having new numbers ... the more likely it will begin affecting the points we receive on our federal applications, which could decrease funds,” Netburn said. “Currently, we use the Shelter Partnership numbers. I’m not calling into question their validity or methodology, but 10 years later it’s time to update.”

As part of its strategy, the Homeless Services Authority is installing the Homeless Management Information System, a new computer software program that will be used by agencies for the homeless in Los Angeles and Orange counties to track those who use the groups’ services. The system will allow all agencies to collect uniform information, such as names, birth dates, veteran status, Social Security numbers and disabilities. But it will have limited use in counting the homeless, because not all service providers will be part of the system.

In addition, Netburn said proposals for a separate countywide street canvass are due by month’s end, with the count to be conducted within the next year -- although there is no precise timetable or price tag yet. He said the Homeless Services Authority is examining cost-saving methods employed in other cities, such as New York’s recent use of 1,000 volunteers and support from public schools and police for a Manhattan street count.

But to accurately canvass homeless people in a county encompassing 4,000 square miles with 10 million residents is a daunting and expensive task -- one that could cost millions, experts said. Shelter Partnership’s executive director, Ruth Schwartz, said the authority would do better to spend the money on services.

“The question I would ask is: Are there more people on the streets today than there are housing opportunities for them? And I would say yes,” she said.

Schwartz said the numbers her agency came up with 10 years ago are still on target. The county’s estimated 15,000 shelter beds are always full and do not account for the large numbers of homeless who sleep outside because of the moderate climate, she said.

“We said about 40,000 are homeless on any given night in the city of Los Angeles, and, given what I see on the street, I don’t have a problem with that,” Schwartz said.

But Marshall McNott, president of the Los Angeles Mission, which has operated for more than 50 years on downtown’s skid row, said he doesn’t believe that the numbers add up. His staff recently conducted a street count on three nights and found a consistent number of about 700 homeless people living in the area bounded by Main Street and Central Avenue and 2nd and 7th streets, rather than the thousands traditionally reported.

McNott said a consortium of missions and other skid row service providers hopes to get a grant to do a more comprehensive count downtown this summer. Agencies have a responsibility to their donors not to hype numbers, said McNott, who added that his group accepts no government funding. “I think, with governmental agencies, one runs the risk of one’s academic judgments not being in sync with reality,” he said.

Meanwhile, with the federal government pressing for more accurate information on the homeless, the city of Los Angeles is in the odd position of suing to get data from the 2000 census that local officials say would help obtain more federal funding for homelessness programs.

City officials suspect that homeless people, especially those living on the street, were vastly undercounted. The lawsuit, filed in November in U.S. District Court, alleges that the Census Bureau will not release specific information about which street locations were canvassed and how many people were counted at each.

Census officials concur that no counts of people living on streets have been released and could not say if such data would ever be available, mainly because of the conclusion that the numbers are unreliable. Some national advocacy groups back the federal position, agreeing that the counts were flawed.

Los Angeles officials say they are particularly vexed, however, because the city invested so much time and money trying to help the census agency do a thorough count -- identifying 7,000 outdoor locations where homeless people could be found, hiring hundreds of outreach workers and even taking census officials on a helicopter tour.

Natalie Profant Komuro, director of policy and legislative affairs for the Homeless Services Authority, said she remembers marking up hundreds of census tract maps and helping to make a training video for census canvassers, many of whom seemed ill-prepared to tackle the forbidding haunts frequented by homeless people.

Recently she surveyed such an area under an overpass of the 101 Freeway near the Los Angeles River with members of the authority’s emergency response team, Jeanette Rowe and David Garcia. Thirty to 40 homeless people have established an urban village there, with a mattress-strewn sleeping area, a makeshift kitchen and a private space complete with a hinged wooden door for its longtime “mayor,” who is said to rule this hidden domain.

Similar enclaves near freeways, parks and abandoned buildings dot the county from ocean to desert.

Komuro said she went with a team to an area near the river at the 7th Street bridge. The workers found evidence of an encampment but no people. She said no one ever went back to check the area again.

On a recent return there, Komuro saw some of the same encampments and new ones that have been erected as police enforcement of quality-of-life laws has swept more street people to the edges of the river.

At the North Spring Street bridge, the emergency response team encountered Gordon, 46, who with his wife, Lessie, 44 said they have been homeless for a year after he became ill and they lost their apartment.

The two had been staying in hotels until rates became too steep and then camped for a while near railroad tracks in La Puente, they said.

Now, they’re staying temporarily with a friend who has constructed a comfortable and neat open-air homestead with a bed, couch and rugs under a bridge, a stone’s throw from the sleek skyscrapers of Bunker Hill.

Gordon, who didn’t want his last name used, said that it’s better than the railroad tracks but that he and Lessie don’t want to be around whoever is counting.

“We’re just tired,” he said. “Every day is a like a monkey on our back.”