Associated Press
WASHINGTON — More than 170,000 people across the country were in homeless and emergency shelters on one spring night last year, according to a census survey. However, critics said the analysis was an incomplete picture of life on the streets in America.
The Census Bureau report released Tuesday counted people in shelters on March 27, 2000, the first day of a three-day survey that covered people visiting soup kitchens and living on city streets.
The bureau earlier this year reported finding 280,527 homeless people nationwide over the three days of the survey. Tuesday’s report said that 170,706 of them were in shelters.
In Washington state, 5,387 people were counted in shelters.
New York and California had the most people in shelters, together totaling over 59,000, with more than 27,000 people counted in New York City alone.
Advocates for the homeless called for more detailed results. Those figures would help officials determine where to target services and how to plan budgets for services, said George Smith, director of San Francisco’s Office of Homelessness.
"Why put out the effort when you are not going to release all the figures?" asked Smith, whose office helped the Census Bureau last year.
Bureau officials on Tuesday said no other details from the survey would be made public.
The survey was not meant to give an official government tally of the homeless, but to add as many people as possible to the overall census, deputy division chief Edison Gore said.
Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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