As Homelessness Grows, Its Racial Undertones Become Harder to Ignore
Photo credit: Craig Lee/The San Francisco Examiner
As a poster child of the declining liberal city, San Francisco has gained quite a reputation for itself. Most notably, regarding its growing homelessness encampments; the city has been in the spotlight with talk of rampant crime rates, abandoned buildings, and the infamous "poop map." Yet down the blocks of San Francisco’s tent-lined streets stand luxury apartments. The characterization of this issue is full of contradictions — as these newly developed units await incoming residents, the number of those on the street continues to grow.
The realities 0f income inequality in major American cities are undeniable, especially in the face of unsheltered homelessness. Characterized by an overall 12% increase over 2022, homelessness in major American cities is a growing issue that governments and citizens have attempted to take on. Across the country, we’ve seen debates over the ethics of clearing encampments, the causes of the worsening inequalities among Americans, and, recently, various Supreme Court cases in California and Oregon revolving around these issues.
But while homelessness is commonly only looked at through the lens of poverty, much of the discourse surrounding this topic ignores the clear racial trends: While Black Americans make up 13% of the population nationally, they account for 40% of the country’s homeless population. This is even more evident in cities across the country: In the District of Columbia, nearly 90% of those who are homeless identify as Black despite making up 44% of the population, and San Francisco’s Black population of only 6-7% accounts for striking 38% of those facing homelessness.
So how did we get here? The answer lies in a complex history of housing discrimination, opportunistic investment, and biased criminalization. The American tradition of racially coded legislation has produced the inequality we see today and has consequently undermined many of the “Band-Aid” solutions that attempt to solve these problems.
Redlining and its effects
The economic gaps evident among Black Americans can be traced to unequal access to wealth accumulation throughout the 20th century. This goes beyond formal and institutional segregation, as we have seen with policies that ultimately produced these results in large metropolitan areas beyond the South. In 1933, one of the most influential policies was born when the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) began the practice of redlining. By classifying neighborhoods by their perceived levels of risk for investment, the HOLC effectively determined which areas were eligible for loans and mortgages.
Though this was officially based on geography, in practice, redlining was based on race. As predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods were classified as high risk for investment, poor and minority Americans were barred from accessing material wealth. Restrictive covenants also played a role in this, as nonwhite citizens could not move into neighborhoods that were classified as more desirable. Even today, studies by the US Department of Housing and Development show that, in comparison to their white counterparts, nonwhite Americans struggle to access certain neighborhoods as they are shown fewer rental units, denied more leases, and given higher rent prices.
As a result, Black communities were effectively prevented from establishing intergenerational mobility. Accessing quality school districts, for example, is largely based on neighborhood, as school funding is derived from local property taxes. The same goes for community resources such as clean public spaces and welfare programs. Neighborhoods located in food deserts or near toxic dumps are often correlated with adverse health effects and lower rates of educational achievement. The effects of neighborhood restrictions go beyond geography — the legacy of strategic zoning laws effectively barred entire generations from building human capital. As a result, in 2023, the household median net worth for Black families was $48,700, compared to $250,400 for white households.
While disinvesting in nonwhite neighborhoods restricted the ability of Black families to accumulate wealth, redlining created a more helpful path for white families. Those living in neighborhoods classified as “low risk” for investment saw significant improvements — as they gained access to either wealth or government resources, white families moved to suburbs and brought their capital with them. In fact, between the years of 1940 and 1970, for every Black family that moved into a major city, two white families moved out. This phenomenon we call white flight has directly contributed to the flow of capital out of Black communities.
One city that experienced this was Newark, New Jersey, which lost almost a third of its population between 1960 and 1990. Coupled with the development of highways, both industries and white families moved to the surrounding suburbs and consequently removed the bulk of Newark’s tax base. As this continued, more than 600 factories shut down between 1970 and 1980 leaving those unable to leave the city with the effects of urban decay. Black families who were unable to access the suburbs felt the burden of this, dealing with increased rates of poverty, substance abuse, and fiscal insolvency.
Though these explicitly racist policies are no longer around, their legacies continue to have effects on the makeup of metropolitan neighborhoods. Now, we’re seeing this through gentrification as the flow of capital moves back into low-income areas. Gentrification can be described as the influx of investment and affluent residents into low-income neighborhoods. Ironically, gentrification stands as a modern reversal of white flight, but is just as damaging. Most notably characterized by rent gaps between the potential and current prices of housing, the process of gentrification has capitalized off the low property values created by decades of underinvestment. But because formerly redlined neighborhoods confined low-income residents to these concentrated areas, while new investments may bring more resources, they remain inaccessible to those who are priced out. In Humboldt Park, Chicago, for example, rent for 1-4 unit housing increased 344% between the years of 2012 and 2022. The 2008 recession greatly amplified this, as mass foreclosure disproportionately impacted Black and Latinx neighborhoods and ultimately attracted investors looking to “flip homes.” In San Francisco, 87% of the neighborhoods currently experiencing gentrification were formerly labeled as “hazardous” by the HOLC. As a racialized tool of displacement, gentrification actively targets those of the lowest socioeconomic statuses — and, not so coincidentally, disproportionately affects nonwhite residents.
Another way this manifests is through soft evictions, or hostile behavior by landlords to push residents out of their homes. In cities like Vallejo, California, longtime residents can suddenly find themselves facing evictions with short timelines and little to no notice. This was exactly the case at Strawberry Hills Apartments, a complex that had historically housed low-income Filipino immigrants. When Strawberry Hills was bought by Reliant Group Management in 2019, longtime residents were forced to choose between a 110% rent increase or immediate eviction. As many residents were elderly and on fixed incomes, Reliant shut down tenants’ trash and repair services when they were unable to move out. Instead of forcing relocation, these hostile evictions only contributed to increased stress levels for tenants and the displacement of many. Beyond Strawberry Hills, these evictions contribute to homelessness around the country; of the 10 most common zip codes that homeless folks in Austin, Texas cited as their last place of residence, 7 have been classified as gentrified neighborhoods. Though the push for rent control is a growing cause, evictions continue to rise in major cities.
The impact of mass incarceration
Beyond discriminatory housing policies, disproportionate incarceration rates have made Black Americans increasingly vulnerable to homelessness. Of course, this is also attributed to the over-policing of impoverished neighborhoods. With rates tripling between the years of 1968 and 2015, Black Americans are now six times more likely to enter the criminal justice system than White Americans. These increased rates can be traced back to a number of factors, including biased sentencing and criminalization of certain drugs. No matter the sentence, a history of incarceration creates barriers to finding secure housing. These include struggles to find employment, access federally subsidized housing, and pass background checks when applying for loans and mortgages.
It’s also important to acknowledge that the criminalization of homelessness itself has its roots in racial bias. The first vagrancy laws in the United States originated in the late 1800s, criminalizing things like loitering, wandering, or acts as simple as seeming suspicious or immoral. Consequently, these laws were disproportionately applied to Black Americans as many escaped the institution of slavery, traveled in search of work, or merely existed in cities. In fact, laws criminalizing vagrancy were not declared unconstitutional until 1971, serving as the basis for thousands of unprecedented arrests throughout the 20th century. Today, we see a modern evolution of anti-vagrancy through prohibitions on loitering, public sleeping, and food sharing, and anti-nuisance ordinances. Although these laws may seem like reasonable restrictions at first glance, the institutional bias in our criminal justice system is revealed in their application and directly contributes to rising homelessness rates.
Justice-based Responses
Homelessness in America is clearly racialized, but the policies we see today don’t address this. Grants Pass, Oregon, is a perfect example, as the city recently underwent a Supreme Court case debating the constitutionality of a $295 public sleeping fine. Though the court's decision is not expected to be released until late June, the current conservative-justice majority is leaning in favor of the city’s fine. And while landmark cases such as these have indubitable influence on the trajectory of future legislation, it’s important to note that cases like these merely focus on the criminalization of homelessness. It doesn’t erase the fact that Black Americans remain not only overrepresented but 69% more likely to exit into homelessness than white adults. At best, they only amplify the inevitable reproduction of racial inequality.
Legislation focusing on justice, on the other hand, would be much more productive. This includes taking preventative measures to address root causes, equitable steps concerning current disparities, and, most importantly, making critical evaluations and fundamental changes to the institutions that created these mechanisms.
This may seem like an unbelievably large task — changing entire institutions cannot be done overnight — but as a first step, we can look to the Framework for an Equitable Homelessness Response. This partnership among national experts and organizations regarding American homelessness aims to focus on five aspects: expanding housing and support, reimaging interim housing, ending unsheltered homelessness, advancing diversion and protection, and strengthening our current systems. Beyond this, investing in the infrastructure, healthcare, education systems, and communities of historically impoverished neighborhoods can directly address redlining and gentrification. These measures can also be seen as an approach to contribute to reparations for African Americans, which would ultimately serve as an end goal.
In San Francisco, we can apply this framework. The reproduction of homelessness will continue until gentrification and its effects are no longer taking place. Though there is a thin line to balance between neighborhood revitalization and pricing people out of their neighborhoods, there are various ways to approach this. Most importantly, when looking to reinvest in neighborhoods, local governments should work with community organizations to promote shared neighborhood visions of development. By doing this, final decision-making power would be given back to residents, refocusing development on undoing years of disinvestment instead of only economic growth.
Another measure would be to solidify and expand current rent control ordinances. In 2019, California’s Assembly Bill 1482 capped rent control increases at 5% annually and established “just cause protections” that require landlords to provide “just causes” upon terminating a lease. Because rent control is most effective when paired with these clauses, this bill serves as a good basis for tenant-conscious legislation. However, San Francisco and California lawmakers still have room for improvement as short-term rentals and unit vacancies from speculative investments remain lacking in comprehensive regulation.
My Thoughts
Though cities like San Francisco get a poor reputation, it’s important to remember that the disparities we see today were long in the making. The reason such a “decline” has taken place can be traced throughout history from the evolution of white flight into strategic disinvestment, over-policing, and gentrification. In fact, those pushing this rhetoric are often the same ones who are either perpetuating or complicit in the gentrification of cities. The wealth brought into the suburbs is making its way back, but we cannot forget about those who were left behind.