Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 20, 1990                   TAG: 9003202284
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

CENSUS HITTING STREETS TO COUNT THE HOMELESS

It will be the most ambitious effort ever to count the homeless and the first in which the government tries to count people living in the streets.

"The government needs to know about everyone and this is a chance for the homeless to say, `Look, we exist, we're part of this country,' " Cynthia Taeuber, special assistant for selected populations at the Census Bureau, said Monday.

Although most Americans will receive census forms asking from a dozen to a few dozen questions, the main effort for the homeless will be just to get them counted, explained Taeuber.

The new effort reflects a change in American society, with the homeless more numerous and more visible than ever.

Dealing with the problem, though, has been muddled by the scarcity of information on how many people have no homes. Estimates have ranged from 250,000 to 3 million or more.

Narrowing down that difference will involve an estimated 15,000 census workers and cost $2.7 million, Taeuber said.

Census officials are looking for homeless in every city of at least 50,000 people. In addition, Census asked smaller communities if they had a homeless population and "if they sent in the information to us, we're there," said Taeuber.

A decade ago the Census Bureau sent workers to flophouses and shelters, and this special count is still known as S-Night. Originally that stood for shelter night, now it's expanded to shelter and street night.

"There are a lot of people that are homeless that don't even come to a shelter. I stayed on the streets . . . for days before I came here," said Toylce Cheatham in a recent interview at a Salvation Army shelter in Detroit.

Workers will try to ask the homeless some questions. But they will simply observe and estimate answers for those sleeping or who are "not in a state of mind to answer questions, or who refuse," Taeuber explained.

Advocates for the homeless are cooperating with the census in many cities, but a few are resisting the effort, claiming the count will be too low.

Because of problems in finding all the homeless, and concerns about worker safety, Taeuber admits she expects the tally to be conservative.

But it will at least provide the first formal count of people in the streets.

In the end, however, the Census Bureau won't announce any specific number of homeless, since officials decline to try to define that term. Instead, the bureau will simply report that its special count found so many people in shelters, so many in missions, so many in flophouses, so many walking or sleeping on the streets, and so forth.

Michael Alakel, who said he has been homeless for three years in Hartford, Conn., thinks census workers will have problems finding people living in Dumpsters, cars, graveyards and under bridges, among other places.

"You have to know where to find these people. They are not going to come out of their hiding places so they can be counted," said Alakel.