C. Surpless

Caffeine and Nicotine
2008-09-03 06:02:07 (UTC)

U.S. to keep count of homeless hidden

The U.S. Census Bureau has decided to keep the number of
homeless Americans a secret.

Census Bureau officials admitted that they will not
separately list the number of people sleeping in shelters,
living in cars, under bridges and on sidewalks as they did
10 years before.

The figures on these hidden Americans were to be released
this month with the last wave of data from the so-
called "short form," the eight questions asked of nearly
every American.

But that changed two months after Bush took office. Rather
than release information on homeless people with the rest
of the data, the bureau's executive staff decided to do
a "special" report on people sleeping in shelters -- but
that will not come out, according to Edison Gore, deputy
chief of the Census Bureau's decennial management
division.

"We want to build some caveats around the [shelter]
numbers," Gore said. "The caveats would be that these
numbers in no way represent a count of the homeless. We
were concerned about the numbers being misused,
basically." Gore said politics did not play a role in the
decision. [He also did not say why such caveats need a
year's delay.]

Homeless advocates who helped with the count said
yesterday they were not informed of the Census Bureau's
decision to put the homeless in a catchall "other" group
where they could not be identified separately.

"Who are they safeguarding?" asked Ron Reinhart, director
of the Salvation Army's PASS Program in Cleveland. "They
don't want people to know what a poor job they did."

Census takers and advocates in Cleveland spent three days
in March of last year counting people sleeping in
shelters, eating at soup kitchens and living under bridges
and sidewalks as part of the massive national head count
meant to provide a snapshot of our nation every 10 years.

But even when Census officials release the figures for
people living in shelters, they won't release the number
of people sleeping outside, even though the government
spent time and tax dollars trying to count them.

"It all goes back to having been burned in 1990 [when the
government was criticized for putting little effort into
the count]," said Barbara Duffield, director of education
for the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington,
D.C. "The Census doesn't want to have a homeless' count."

Counting the homeless is tricky, and homeless advocates
said they were aware of the data's shortcomings. Still,
many said it was important to acknowledge that people are
living on the streets and to provide a count that could be
improved upon in 10 years.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Cleveland Democrat, yesterday
called on the bureau to release the homeless figures
because they are a "moral index in our society."

At age 11, Kucinich lived in a Dodge with his mother,
father and four younger siblings for four months. His dad
was out of work; his mother was ill.

"We lived in our car around 32nd Street," the congressman
recalled. "In the evenings, we parked overlooking the
[LTV] steel mill. I'd watch that big sleeve of fire in the
sky as I'd go to sleep. It symbolized hope for me then.

"We need to know because we need to provide services for
these people," Kucinich said. "It's also an indication of
the strength of our community and of our economy."




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