It’s arduous for some Californians — perhaps many — to wrap their heads round the concept the homelessness we see on our streets has any connection to slavery.
We’re California, in any case, supposedly a “free” state. We like to think about ourselves as distant in each ideology and from the brutality that constructed the South — though slavery was widespread throughout our Gold Rush period, ensnaring not solely Black individuals, but in addition Latinos and Indigenous communities.
However researchers on the revered UC San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative haven’t any doubts that the historic trafficking of 12 million Black individuals to American shores is instantly tied to the Black poverty and ache on our West Coast streets at the moment.
“The overrepresentation of Black individuals within the homeless inhabitants arises from 400 years of anti-Black racism entrenched within the constructions, establishments, ideologies, and social norms of American life, beginning with slavery,” the researchers stated in a research launched lately.
That’s a fierce little bit of truth-telling that will shock those that haven’t been taking note of discussions about reparations — the necessity to make proper the wrongs of systemic racism and compensate Black individuals for the lasting harms of slavery. However for individuals who adopted California’s reparations activity pressure and for many Black People, the findings are hardly groundbreaking.
Slavery was Jim Crow legal guidelines and lynchings within the South. To flee, Black individuals fled to the North and, sure, the West. But, upon their arrival, redlining and a refusal to spend money on Black communities led to generations of state-enforced poverty and a scarcity of housing that builds wealth and stability.
Poverty grew to become an excuse for surveillance and criminalization — together with violent over-policing, little one protecting providers breaking up households and the mass incarceration of Black males. And right here we’re, with Black People in such an economically and socially precarious scenario {that a} single misfortune can finish in homelessness.
“This didn’t simply occur accidentally and it didn’t simply occur as a result of there have been just a few dangerous individuals. This was organized,” stated Margot Kushel, head of the Benioff initiative and one of many authors of the research, which recommends that reparations within the type of money funds are wanted to fight homelessness within the Black neighborhood.
“That is the strongest case for reparations, proper?” she stated. “That looks like a dialog that, if we’re being trustworthy, we have to have.”
It’s definitely the case being made by California’s Legislative Black Caucus. Final week, the members gathered in Sacramento for a information convention to formally announce 14 payments they plan to introduce and again this yr, in hopes of turning the suggestions of California’s reparations activity pressure into actionable legal guidelines and insurance policies.
“This can be a huge enterprise, so you possibly can count on a bundle yr after yr till our work is finished,” defined Assemblymember Lori D. Wilson (D-Suisun Metropolis), chair of the Legislative Black Caucus. “Some might be systemic in nature. Some would require direct investments in individuals or communities. All would require the assist of the Legislature and the governor.”
One of many preliminary payments requires a proper apology from the state, one other calls for compensation for land seized in racist acts of eminent area like Bruce’s Seashore, and one other would ban involuntary servitude, specifically in prisons the place inmates are sometimes compelled to do work for pennies an hour.
All draw a direct line between the dire circumstances at the moment confronted by thousands and thousands of Black Californians — together with homelessness and housing insecurity — and the luggage of many years of discrimination. The members of the Legislative Black Caucus have been clearly drained and unmoved by the various excuses which were given for why reparations can’t turn out to be a actuality.
“Our state wants to handle these harms,” Wilson stated matter-of-factly.
“America’s wealth was constructed by the compelled labor of trafficked African individuals and their descendants, who have been all purchased and offered as commodities,” stated Assemblymember Akilah Weber (D-La Mesa). “America’s authorities in any respect ranges allowed or participated in exploiting, abusing, terrorizing and murdering individuals of African descent in order that principally white People [could] revenue from their enslavement.”
“This Legislature allowed slave homeowners to carry their enslaved property as long as they arrived right here earlier than 1850,” stated Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles), scoffing on the frequent pushback that reparations aren’t owed as a result of California wasn’t a slave state. “Then the California State Supreme Courtroom stated slave homeowners are OK, so long as they solely keep quickly. That’s not freedom.”
Nevertheless it was maybe Assemblymember Corey Jackson (D-Perris) who finest summed up the case for reparations — the identical case made by Kushel and born out by her staff’s analysis.
“Now we have to know that the period of the colorblind society is a failure,” he stated. “If you happen to can’t see us, you possibly can’t serve us.”
The fantasy that race doesn’t matter, embedded into legislation by way of Proposition 209, is one motive why California has been spinning its wheels on homelessness. It probably will proceed to take action — spending billions of tax {dollars} — till lawmakers and the governor begin addressing the causes and coverage selections affecting these most probably to finish up on the road.
Whereas Black individuals make up about 7% of California’s inhabitants, they signify 26% of these with out everlasting properties, in accordance with information pulled from the California Statewide Examine of Individuals Experiencing Homelessness (CASPEH). This may come as no shock to anybody who has taken a stroll by way of Skid Row.
Sure, we’d like extra housing. And sure, we’d like extra providers.
However what of the roughly 75% of these Black unhoused Californians who’re males, lots of whom got here instantly out of an extended keep in county jail or a stint in jail? They have been launched with perhaps a pair a whole lot bucks from the state and few if any choices apart from a fast slide into homelessness.
It’s a demographic Kushel factors out needs to be simpler to assist as a result of we all know who they’re and the place they’re earlier than they turn out to be unhoused. We simply select to not do it.
What of the 80% of the Black individuals residing on our streets who merely misplaced their housing? They have been hit with an sickness, for instance, or a job loss, discrimination from landlords unwilling to lease to these with poor credit score or sophisticated histories. Half are over the age of fifty, dealing with their senior years with out shelter.
And what of the truth that many of the Black individuals residing with out properties got here from excessive poverty? Those that had a spot of their very own, their identify on a lease earlier than shedding shelter, made about $1,200 a month. Those that have been residing off the grace of others have been incomes solely about $960 a month.
Not all Black persons are poor, after all. Removed from it. However due to the lasting harms of slavery and discriminatory housing insurance policies, poverty remains to be disproportionately predictable amongst Black individuals — and never simply in California.
The median white household had $184,000 in wealth in 2019 in contrast with simply $23,000 for the comparable Black household, in accordance with the research. And, all through the pandemic, the racial wealth hole has truly elevated, for a distinction that now tops $240,000.
Unsurprisingly, house possession numbers are simply as bleak. Census information from 2023 discovered 75% of white households owned their properties. Simply 45% of Black households owned theirs — up simply 3% from 1960, when it was authorized to discriminate in opposition to Black homebuyers in California.
Whereas many elected officers have been wringing their palms concerning the nexus of dependancy, poverty and homelessness, it’s price noting that Black individuals have been statistically much less more likely to report abusing arduous medication than different demographics, regardless of the stereotypes and the criminalization.
That so many Black individuals have been compelled into homelessness with out the additional push from substance abuse struck Kushel as one other instance of simply how precarious Black existence could be. “It takes much less to tip them into homelessness,” she stated.
To counter this, the UCSF researchers are proposing money funds as one doable resolution.
Kara Younger Ponder, the research’s lead writer, stated most homeless Black Californians informed the researchers that ongoing funds of lower than $500 a month (just like a assured earnings) or a one-time, lump-sum cost of $5,000 or $10,000 may get them into housing. The latter is about what’s essential for the deposit and first month’s lease on an house.
However past the easy want for cash shared by all homeless individuals, Younger Ponder stated that Black individuals additionally reported dealing with anti-Black bias throughout the system of homeless providers — much less assist in each space from housing coordinators to medical suppliers.
“They’re nonetheless being handled otherwise than individuals of different races,” Younger Ponder stated, making the money funds a important means of “circumventing” discrimination.
Within the context of reparations, the thought of money funds has been controversial — to place it mildly. A ballot carried out by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Research and and co-sponsored by The Occasions discovered that California voters oppose such funds by a 2-to-1 margin for Black individuals whose ancestors have been enslaved.
“It has a steep uphill climb, at the least from the general public’s standpoint,” stated Mark DiCamillo, director of the ballot, stated after it was launched in August.
With a state finances deficit that might quickly hit $73 billion, there are monetary constraints, too.
Wilson acknowledged that is one motive why she and different Black lawmakers determined to forgo asking for money funds now. However the larger motive, she stated, was the dearth of public information about why reparations are even essential and fears {that a} invoice asking for essentially the most unpopular type of it will fail, dealing a blow to what’s quick turning into a nationwide motion.
“There’s plenty of misinformation on the market,” Weber stated. “I’m a Californian born and raised. And I believed all these points occurred within the South, I had no thought of the issues that California had finished.”
However members of the Legislative Black Caucus haven’t dominated out a invoice asking for money funds sooner or later. That California’s legal guidelines and insurance policies have systemically oppressed Black individuals economically is plain, they are saying — and they’re proper.
Kushel, Younger Ponder and their fellow researchers on the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative are solely the newest to show that Black individuals have been purposefully excluded from wealth and stability, and that reparations could also be wanted to repair the hardship that has brought about. The one query is when Californians are going to start out believing it.
“America’s unique sin is the genocide and enslavement of human beings,” stated Jones-Sawyer. “America’s second biggest sin is watching it occur, and pretending that it by no means did.”
