Counting a Population in Flux

Salvatore Gilio, homeless for 20 of his 50 years, has learned to distrust the government. He remembers when a friend was deported to Canada. He remembers when his food stamps were cut off.

So when a dozen federal workers showed up Tuesday afternoon at Somebody Cares Kitchen, a Costa Mesa nonprofit organization that feeds the needy, he was quick to plan a graceful exit.

“I’m going to help out in back,” said Gilio, who recently found a job and an apartment but stopped by the kitchen for a bowl of soup. He smiled nervously and pointed to a door nearby. “I’m very suspicious of the government. They’re tallying for reasons I don’t know.”

Those were just the kind of fears that U.S. census workers were trying to allay on Tuesday, the second day of an all-out campaign to count homeless people in Orange County and across Southern California. Among other uses, tallies will be used to help determine funding for homeless programs.

While the 1990 census found fewer than 2,000 homeless people in the county, social service groups estimate as many as 15,000 sleep in shelters, bus stations and parks every night.

Hoping to improve their performance in tabulating the homeless, census workers fanned out Tuesday night with clipboards at soup kitchens, street corners, encampments, underpasses and beaches in search of a population accustomed to being ignored.

Thom Burgert, a supervisor at the Garden Grove census office, said the tally so far has gone better than expected, with counts from shelters visited Monday night reaching expected levels. Burgert specializes in counting hard-to-reach groups. He credits the success to advance visits with leaders of homeless encampments and shelter managers.

“Ironically, but understandably, the people that need to be counted the most are people who have the most aversion to helping us,” Burgert said. “But it’s just a lack of knowledge that stops them.”

In Fullerton, about 40 workers Monday canvassed the Fullerton National Guard Armory, a winter shelter. Arnold Landau, the local census office manager, said that although some respondents were at first reluctant to talk with census takers, none refused to participate.

“They might have only given part of their name or refused to answer some of the questions, but there was no instance of absolute refusal,” Landau said.

At a shelter run by First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Pastor Wiley Drake told residents they had to answer census questions or leave.

“We’re a private facility and have all sorts of rules,” Drake said Tuesday afternoon. “And we told our residents that the census does a lot of good for homeless people with federal funding.”

Residents of Drake’s shelter said some homeless people left out of fear for their privacy or out of distrust for the government in general. And some who stayed resented the pressure.

“I felt like I was being blackmailed,” said Laura Kessey, 26, who answered census questions reluctantly. “It’s not anybody’s right to pressure someone into giving personal information.”

Not Everyone Is Mistrustful

While some ducked out of shelters Monday night to avoid the census takers, many homeless people said they had no objections to being counted.

“It’s important to let the guys in power know what’s going on,” said Francis Kevin O’Brien, a 55-year-old man who has been homeless for five years. “The questions are kind of personal, but I’ve got nothing to hide--I just tell it like it is.”

Nadine Harris--who, like O’Brien, was waiting for a bed at the Santa Ana Armory shelter Monday night--said she’d already been interviewed by a census enumerator earlier in the day. “They’re everywhere,” said Harris, 35.

Not all homeless people were so easily persuaded. On sunny Venice Beach on Tuesday afternoon, a handful of homeless men said they were unaware of the count and viewed it with great skepticism.

“They don’t do anything like that. I’ve never run into that,” said an incredulous Sterling G. Mouton, 42. “Counting people? That’s kind of stupid. That’s like the police.”

Some homeless advocates complained that the Census Bureau did not do enough to advertise this week’s tally. None of the $167 million spent on census advertising targeted the homeless, critics said.

“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. A homeless man staying with his girlfriend at the Sylmar armory said lack of awareness explained the low turnout there Monday night: only 22 people showed up at a shelter that typically accommodates 125 on winter nights.

“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. He said he hadn’t heard about the homeless count until a local homeless agency van brought him to the armory Monday night.

Incentives--such as a new blanket or a shaving and bath kit--being offered in some areas Tuesday night helped persuade the reluctant.

At a Salvation Army drop-in center in Oxnard, clients quickly formed a line that stretched out the door and into the parking lot after the shelter manager provided complimentary sanitary kits to those willing to fill out the forms.

“I don’t see how it can do any harm,” said Oxnard native Frank Morales, 39, who became homeless in December after a messy divorce and battle with health problems. “If it really does what they say it does, I think that’s really cool.”

J.R. Brown, who filled out a form for an appreciative census taker Monday at the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles, had a similar view.

“It’s good to be counted, isn’t it?” he asked. “It’s better than being ignored.”

* Times staff writers Annette Kondo, David Haldane, Brady MacDonald, Fred Alvarez, Johnathon E. Briggs, Bobby Cuza and Monte Morin contributed to this report.

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Elusive Numbers

Census workers fanned out across Orange County and Southern California this week to count the traditionally underrepresented homeless population. A look at the 1990 Census results:

LOCATION: HOMELESS

United States: 228,372

California: 48,887

Orange County: 1,934

Anaheim: 498

Santa Ana: 436

Costa Mesa: 251

Orange: 170

Fullerton: 91

Garden Grove: 62

Huntington Beach: 19

Irvine: 10

Source: Larry Hugg, Census Bureau