Homeless Prove Elusive to S.D. Census Takers

It was just after dawn, and Benjamin Leff, census taker for a day, trudged through a narrow, swampy path in search of subjects for the nation’s population count.

Latino day laborers en route to prospective jobs in Northern San Diego County periodically passed on his left and right, behind him and in front of him, but few were close enough to allow the counter to veer from his soggy route and ask his array of questions.

“You’d have to have an army of 100,000 people out here to count ‘em all,” a frustrated Leff said as he came to a dead-end, his progress blocked by a boggy channel leading from the Agua Hedionda Lagoon. “Anyway, it’s an adventure.”

Leff’s difficulties were emblematic of those faced by about 250 census takers--”enumerators”--assigned to count residents of the migrant camps of San Diego County, one of the nation’s most singular outposts of homelessness. Later, officials acknowledged that a recount of the migrants might be necessary because of the North County’s “unique set of characteristics” and the inherent difficulty of counting such a population, said Michael J. Weiler, assistant regional census manager.

Apart from the migrant count, officials said that counting the homeless proceeded smoothly throughout the San Diego area. Advocates for the homeless have long argued that official methodology would probably result in an undercount, and Weiler conceded that “the results may be on the conservative side.”

Detailed data will not be available until at least April, 1991. The homeless counts on Tuesday and Wednesday kicked off the tally for the 1990 census.

The census, a massive undertaking, is a critical funding tool; allotments of government monies to areas are often based on population. For every resident not counted, it is estimated that about $200 is lost--$150 in federal funds and $50 in state money.

In San Diego and Imperial counties, officials positioned about 650 census takers, including 314 in downtown San Diego and 250 in North County. More than 700 locations were predesignated as homeless sites, although homeless advocates said that many spots were probably missed, including many isolated migrant camps in Northern San Diego County and some canyon residences in Balboa Park.

The Census Bureau “just doesn’t know where these folks are,” said the Rev. Rafael V. Martinez, a Presbyterian minister who works with migrant workers and has been critical of official plans to count the day laborers.

Among the enumerators on duty was Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who praised the process.

As in other cities, some San Diego shelters provided incentives such as free meals, movies and soft drinks to attract homeless people and make it easier for visiting census officials to count them. At the St. Vincent de Paul/Joan Kroc Center downtown, the city’s largest shelter, a “slumber party” drew 800 guests Tuesday evening, double the shelter’s normal capacity. Cots were placed in the dining hall and chapel.

Perhaps the most difficult homeless people to count in San Diego are the thousands of migrant laborers, mostly men from Mexico, who are often in the shadow of suburban homes valued at $250,000 or more. They reside in a variety of crude squatters’ dwellings ranging from shacks fashioned from scrap wood and plastic to bunker-like caves excavated from the dirt--”spider holes,” as they are known.

Estimates of the number of such homeless migrants, many of them undocumented, range from 5,000 to 30,000.

Census authorities in San Diego had pledged to do their utmost to count the migrant population--whether they are legal U.S. residents or not.

“We’ll go wherever these migrants live,” vowed Maureen R. Wanzie, the Census Bureau’s district office manager in Carlsbad, on the eve of the count. “We’re talking about canyons. We’re talking about spider holes. We’re talking about temporary housing that may consist of just a blanket or a piece of cardboard.”

But counting the migrants proved a daunting task. Finding them was a big part of the problem, and many census takers did not speak Spanish.

“Sign language,” one census taker explained when asked how he expected to accomplish his goal without speaking Spanish. Census counters acknowledged that they largely dispensed with in-depth questioning and relied on head counts and brief conversations.

By dawn at 6 a.m. in a lifting fog, two elderly census counters who spoke little Spanish wandered alone through a field along El Camino Real, the main curbside hiring venue for migrant workers.

“You seen anyone yet?” asked Robert Nelson, winded after a mile walk, as he climbed over a barbed-wire fence, narrowly avoiding snagging his white, government-issue vest identifying him as a census taker.

“We haven’t seen a thing,” said Nelson, who clutched his census clipboard and forms. “Not even a jack rabbit out there.”

Ahead were two small migrant camps. “Census? I haven’t seen anyone from the census,” said Juan Prado, a 22-year-old undocumented Mexican who was just waking inside his wood-and-plastic lean-to wedged into a hillside dotted with migrant outposts. “Maybe the census people will come by the packing house later,” Prado said, speaking of the flower-packing facility where he occasionally finds work.

Down the road, hopeful day laborers were starting to gather at the Country Store in Carlsbad, one of the favorite migrant waiting spots for roadside labor. Also present early Wednesday were a number of census counters, one of whom dutifully took information from a number of men standing in front of the shop.

“Hey,” another census taker said, interrupting her busy colleague, “all of these guys have already been counted.”

Most migrants appeared willing to chat with the census takers, despite their fear of authorities. “I’ll do whatever I can for the government of the United States,” offered Francisco Carvajal, a 42-year-old Mexican man who had just been interviewed by census officials in a nearby shopping center. “They need to know that we’re here.”

Down the road, four census takers began walking through a swampy path they hoped would lead to a camp. The route quickly led into a thickly vegetated quagmire, and no further progress could be made without risk of becoming covered in the inky goo.

“The best you can do is count ‘em as they come out,” said a woman census taker proceeding gingerly along the sodden trail.

“One problem,” said Leff, who was following along the trail, “ . . . is that no one seems to know where these people are for sure. There’s nothing you can look at and say, ‘It’s here.’ Right now, there doesn’t seem to be anybody here.”