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

DATE: SATURDAY, April 13, 1991                   TAG: 9104130116
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: STATE  
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

RIGHTS GROUPS CALL HOMELESS CENSUS `BOGUS FROM THE START'

Census takers counted 228,621 homeless people during a one-night campaign to find people who otherwise might have been left off the once-a-decade tally, the Census Bureau said Friday.

Advocates of the homeless quickly denounced the numbers as "bogus."

The count is less than 0.1 percent of the total U.S. population of 248.7 million.

The largest number of homeless people counted on the night of March 20-21, 1990, was in New York City - 33,830.

Forty percent of the homeless counted were in two states: New York and California. The country's most populous state, California, had 48,887 homeless people.

The $2.7 million campaign to count the homeless was called Shelter and Street Night - S-Night for short.

"S-Night was not intended to, and did not, produce a count of the homeless population of the country," said John Connolly, a spokesman for the bureau.

The bureau divided its count into two components: People found in emergency shelters for the homeless and those spotted on the street.

More than three-fourths of the homeless counted were in shelters. The national street count found only 49,793 homeless people.

The leader of a homeless-rights group in the District of Columbia, Carol Fennelly, called the count "bogus from the start."

"They intended to produce a low count so the government, the administration, the Republicans could say there aren't that many homeless and continue to cut programs," she said.

Advocates for the homeless have said they were worried the Census Bureau's count would become accepted as an accurate figure for the number of people in the nation without a place to live.

by CNB