The Homeless Census Count Was Difficult Before COVID-19 — Now It’s a Feat

Homeless people are among the hardest to count for the U.S. Census Bureau. Now that COVID-19 has restricted normal operations, some Bay Area groups are still working to spread the word while sheltering in place.

San Jose-based nonprofit Downtown Streets Team is trying to ensure Bay Area homeless people get counted this year. The nonprofit had initially planned to canvas encampments and talk to people face to face. But once COVID-19 hit, those plans went out the window. The organization is now relying on their outreach workers, who are often homeless themselves, to spread the word.

Denise Del Rio is one of those volunteers. She became homeless two years ago after losing her mom to lung cancer and her house to a cheating boyfriend. She's 59 years old, has congestive heart failure and pulmonary arterial hypertension, a type of hypertension that affects her lungs and heart.

She now lives in a white van that she parks in Hayward. She keeps her distance and wears a mask while doing outreach work, but it's still scary. "I get frightened, but I pray a lot," she said.

Downtown Streets provides Del Rio with a weekly basic needs stipend for the census work she's doing. She has a network of friends and acquaintances she's been reaching out to, but the census is not an easy sell. It's not that people are worried about the pandemic — Del Rio calls people on the phone and encourages them to use the phone or to fill out the survey online.

"The first question is, 'What do I get out of it?' And I'm like, 'Well, I can give you a coffee or we could go to 7/11 and get something to eat, but the main function is to get your count,' " Del Rio said.

Downtown Streets has a contract with United Way Bay Area to facilitate the count among this historically undercounted group. The nonprofit has five volunteers, including Del Rio, working in Hayward. They have applied for grants to do work in six more cities — including San Jose, San Francisco and Berkeley — but they won't hear back about those grants until April 27.

Tiana Smith, Downtown Streets Team lead for the census, believes the team is doing the best they can under the circumstances, but they're still missing people.

"Well, some people don't have cellphones, so we can't reach them by a text message or a phone call," Smith said. "People who are in those hard-to-reach places, if it's under the bridge or in an encampment somewhere."

The California Complete Count Census 2020 office is spending $187.2 million on outreach and communications. They're working with 120 organizations to reach hard-to-count groups, including seniors, people with disabilities and immigrant communities. Homebase is one of those organizations, focusing on the homeless count.

Jessie Hewins, Homebase's managing attorney, said the San Francisco-based nonprofit was among the groups working to provide accessible self-response census kiosks that would be stationed in libraries and community centers for anyone to use. But now that shelter-in-place orders have prohibited face-to-face interactions, those plans are on hold for now.

"The COVID-19 outbreak has really thrown a wrench in a lot of the preparation that was going on," Hewins said.

Homebase has been coordinating outreach efforts within shelters, food banks and other homeless service organizations, but it's not anywhere near the effort the nonprofit was planning to roll out by now.

The U.S. Census Bureau has pushed back some deadlines for data collection. The self-response period has been extended from July 31 to Oct. 31. But the deadline to count people experiencing homelessness outdoors hasn't been set yet. The Census Bureau says that schedule needs "further review."

"Because all of that is on hold right now and those person-to-person interactions aren't happening," Hewin said. "We're kinda waiting to see when some of that will get pushed back to."

Hewins said it's difficult to plan outreach efforts when she's not getting clear guidance from the Census Bureau on what outreach is permitted right now. And while the census is important, organizations like hers have their plates full with matters of greater urgency: They're trying to move homeless people off the streets and from congested shelters into temporary housing and hotel rooms. They're also trying to identify and protect the immunocompromised within homeless groups.

"Everybody is just doing their best to change course," Hewins said.