County’s Homeless Population Up 13%, Private Study Says : Poverty: More than 77,000 people were believed to be living on the streets in mid-1992. Blaming government policies, analysts expect the number to rise.

The number of people who live on the streets of Los Angeles County continued to grow last year, increasing at least 13% from mid-1991 to mid-1992, according to a private study released Tuesday.

The study, by Shelter Partnership Inc., a support agency for homeless programs, estimated that there were as many as 77,141 people--including nearly 11,000 children--without homes in the county on any given night during the study period.

The homeless figure, the most recent total available, compares with the estimated high of 68,600 homeless people Shelter Partnership had found in the previous 12 months.

Ruth Schwartz, the group’s executive director, attributed the increase to high rates of joblessness, cutbacks in government social service programs and tighter eligibility rules for aid.

Phillip Nichols, a Shelter Partnership board member, said even larger increases are expected once the organization measures the impact of recent social service cutbacks, such as last December’s reduction in general relief grants to unemployed single adults from $341 to $293.

“Current (government) policies are leading to an increase in homelessness rather than long-term solutions to the core problem of poverty,” Nichols said.

In addition to government policy, other factors, such as last spring’s civil disturbances in Los Angeles, are certain to have had a negative impact on homelessness, Schwartz said.

The true level of homelessness may be higher than the figures indicate, she said. The statistics in the study came primarily from government-sponsored programs and excluded some categories of the homeless--undocumented aliens, those who do not seek public aid and people who do not qualify for aid, such as those who retain some assets.

Schwartz and Nichols called on President Clinton and Los Angeles Mayor-elect Richard Riordan to work together on the homelessness problem.

“The problem can’t be solved solely at the local level,” Schwartz said. “We would hope the new mayor will be inspired to provide leadership to seek some of the resources from the Clinton Administration.”

Charles King, operations manager of the Midnight Mission in downtown Los Angeles, said his facility has not experienced the increases cited in the study. “You see a greater increase at certain times of the month,” but overall the number of people served by his agency remains steady, King said. The mission provides 150 beds for homeless people each night and 1,500 meals daily.

Kimberly Mason, a manager at the Downtown Women’s Center, which provides shower and bathroom facilities on an “in-and-out” basis to about 50 women daily and residential facilities to an equal number, said she only has to walk downtown to see that there has been a significant increase in the number of women on the street.

“Lots of homeless women never use our facilities,” she said, “but they are out there.”

This is the third year Shelter Partnership has published studies on the number of homeless people in Los Angeles County. The first study, for the period spanning June, 1989, to July, 1990, found as many as 59,000 people living on the street any given night.

In contrast to the one-night figure, there were 120,000 to 222,000 homeless at one time or another in the county during the most recent study period, compared with 114,000 to 183,000 in the first survey.