Census Count in Cleveland

Counting Homeless People as Part of the Census

It is an overwhelming task to try to enumerate the population, and it is especially daunting to count the transient populations. NEOCH did a ton of work over the last month to get as many homeless people as possible counted. We met with Census officials on a regular basis, and distributed Census gear to every homeless person who we met. The Census was at all three Stand Downs, and we gave out thousands of fliers.

Overall, I think that they got everyone at the shelters, but the other counts are unlikely to yield any good numbers. The Census officials counted shelters on Monday then soup kitchens on Tuesday and then the outdoor sites on Wednesday. The Census made the last minute decision to categorize transitional shelters as group quarters instead of shelters and so were planning not to count any of those facilities this week. We appealed this to the regional office to ask that they reconsider this decision, since transitional shelters are shelters and were counted in the 2000 Census. By skipping the transitional shelters, we would have a significant under count. They changed their minds about noon on Monday, but officials were not able to get to the transitional shelters until Tuesday or even some on Wednesday. NEOCH called every single shelter three times to make sure that a Census worker had visited their site. We found that four facilities were skipped, and we informed the census employees.

There seemed to be a lack of staff assigned to the homeless count and certainly a lack of clerical staff preparing for the count. It seems that were a lot of people advertising the importance of the Census, but not as many doing the actual count. We did not hear back from anyone else who said that they were missed, so we believe that every shelter was counted. We do not have much information on the second day of the count, when they were doing hot meals and mobile canteens, except that five or six of the homeless drop in/meal programs have Census staff on site for 15 to 20 hours a week to answer questions and encourage people to complete the application.

The last day was very bad and highly questionable as to accuracy. We gave the Census staff a list of all the outdoor sites that we were aware of locally. But it is nearly impossible to find these individuals in one 24 hour period. Basically, the outdoor count was a waste of time. Census staff really wanted to do the count at night, which every one of the professional staff said was a bad idea. We suggested early morning (6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 5 to 8:30 p.m.), but they could not be convinced and went later into the night on Tuesday night. No matter if they have an army of counters, it is just impossible to count homeless people who live outside in 24 hours. So, they drove by a bunch of sites that we had given them, and tried as hard as they could in the dark to count, but this was not a good use of resources or time.

In 2000, only the shelter numbers were released and I am pretty sure that we did a good job in Cleveland with that count. It was a great deal of work trying to get the Census count correct, and most cities don't have an advocacy homeless Coalition to coordinate these activities.

Brian

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