Homeless count results should be finalized soon
CITYWIDE — Census data collected nearly a year ago to address the regional homeless problem will be revealed publicly this month, that is if Southland politicians who want to take action on the issue can make it to the press conference.
Organizers attribute scheduling difficulties among Los Angeles county and city political representatives for the reason why detailed demographic information concerning the regional homeless population continues to be withheld from the public.
However, now that the holiday shuffle is winding down, organizers hope the release of the 200-plus page report may come as soon as Jan. 12.
In June, the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority — the government agency which organized the first homeless census for the county — released preliminary data regarding the region’s down and out.
However, information specific to cities concerning their respective homeless inhabitants — which officials in Santa Monica want to use to tailor its servicing — has been withheld since last summer. The information is expected to include demographics about the age, gender, family and mental health status of homeless individuals within the county’s 88 cities.
The delay is attributable, in part, to the fact that Applied Research, the firm which prepared the report, has periodically had to update it since June. In addition, tentative plans to release the report two months ago were bumped as the calendar closed in on the holidays, said Scott Ito, LAHSA spokesman.
“As we came close to Thanksgiving it became difficult to coordinate the release of the report between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, so we pushed it to the beginning of the year,” Ito said.
Ito also said the later timing of the report’s release has nothing to with organizational changes underway at LAHSA. In October, news outlets reported that the agency had a $5 million operational shortfall. Several Santa Monica service providers were affected by the financial crisis, some of which LAHSA owed hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Ito said those financial issues are being cleared up.
As LAHSA has undergone some tough times, its representatives hope this year will be more promising. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which help fund LAHSA, gave the agency a a $24.6 million budget boost for the next fiscal year.
A large portion of that money is expected to be used to better improve services for the chronic homeless population. Of the nearly 90,000 people in the Southland who are homeless, 37,800 of them — or 42 percent — are considered chronically homeless. That means they’ve been on the streets for more than a year, or have had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years. They also suffer from one or more disability, mental illness, or from a form of substance abuse.
However, Ito was hesitant to discuss how the county’s money would be used. Officials have held off allocating the funds in part because they hope the demographic information to be released in the report will help them determine the kinds of programming they should support.
Despite the reasons, some residents in Santa Monica question the delay. Don Gray, who lives in the Pico neighborhood, believes it’s more important that uncorrupted data reach the public in a timely manner before political players have a hand in interpreting it.
“We understood this homeless count would be an unbiased analytical performance, and the fact it’s taken a year for these numbers to be released makes me question the results of the survey,” Gray said. “We should get the raw numbers first, and the politicians should interpret them later.
“It puts Santa Monica at a disadvantage because we could be utilizing the numbers already for programs. This is not the way social science should be done.”
Ito insists Applied Research has taken painstaking steps to ensure the quality of the data in its report.
Local politicians also share some of Gray’s frustration. City Councilman Bobby Shriver, who has campaigned on the homeless issue, said he believes the information will be helpful when it’s released.
“I look forward to seeing it,” Shriver said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 5, 2006. Read the original PDF.