L.A. homeless hit unprecedented level
Tally reveals 91,000 a night as highest rate in nation
By Jason Kosareff
Whittier Daily News Staff Writer
Thursday, June 16, 2005
A major tally of the homeless released Thursday showed
91,000 people are without a bed on any given night in Los
Angeles County.
"It makes the homeless problem and the number of
homeless people in Los Angeles (County) very real,' said
Mitchell Netburn, executive director of the Los Angeles
Homeless Services Authority, which oversaw the count.
The count shows the metropolitan area has the highest rate of
homelessness in the nation.
"However many there are, it's an extraordinarily high
level of homelessness and that's the take-away,' said
economist Paul Tepper, with the Institute for the Study of
Homelessness and Poverty at the Weingart Center.
"Homelessness is at an unprecedented level.'
In January, 1,000 paid workers and volunteers canvassed 500
Census tracts in the county including the Whittier area and
interviewed 3,300 homeless people. Workers also conducted
telephone interviews with 1,000 families to determine if
anyone homeless was staying with them. Other homeless people
were counted at care centers, shelters and clinics.
Local numbers from the count will be released over the next
few weeks, Netburn said.
Ted Knoll of the Whittier Area First Day Coalition, which
serves homeless and at-risk poor, said the data from the
count will help nonprofit groups like his apply for funding.
It should also help convince people that a massive homeless
problem does exist, even though it is not always apparent in
suburban areas, Knoll said.
"Because people don't see it, they don't understand the
nature of the issue,' he said.
The 91,000 homeless figure lands pretty close to the
long-held belief that roughly 86,000 people are homeless in
the county on any given night. But Netburn said one
surprising revelation of the count was the number of
chronically homeless people.
The count shows 34,898 people in the county have been
homeless for more than one year, a rate much higher than
expected and the highest of any metropolitan area in the
nation.
African Americans who make up 9 percent of the county are the
most disproportionately represented among the homeless. The
count shows 39 percent of the county's homeless are black; 29
percent are white; 25 percent are Hispanic; and 7 percent are
multiracial or other.
Tepper said another surprising statistic was the
less-than-expected number of homeless families counted. The
count showed 7,551 homeless families in county shelters or on
the streets on any given night. Tepper said given the
reported trend of more homeless families he would have
expected to see a higher rate.
Jason Kosareff can be reached at (626) 962-8811, Ext. 2717,
or by e-mail at jason.kosareff@sgvn.com.