In a report that treats Los Angeles’s homelessness crisis as a symptom of racism, city and county officials this week pointed to the high number of black people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles and the need to address the disparity in order to address the crisis.
Black people have long been overrepresented among Los Angeles County’s homeless population. In a 2017 survey, black people made up one in 10 people in the county, but were 40 percent of the homeless population, according to the report released Monday by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s Ad Hoc Committee on Black People Experiencing Homelessness.
The committee was formed last April to look at why such a large proportion of the homeless population is black, look into ways to make the services more racially equitable, and figure out how to better serve the unique needs of black people who are homeless.
The authors of the report put the blame for homelessness in Los Angeles on the unequal treatment black people experience in the areas of education, criminal justice, healthcare, employment and housing.
“Homelessness is a byproduct of racism in America,” the report states.
Members of the ad hoc committee echoed that statement, saying Monday that racial inequities must be addressed if Angelenos want to fix their homelessness crisis.
“In order for us to end homelessness, we have to end homelessness for those groups that are disproportionately impacted, and black people is one of those largest groups,” said Jacqueline Waggoner, chair of the ad hoc committee.
Waggoner said the reasons people become homeless are myriad and involve not just “failures” of the homeless services providers, but also the failures of other institutions.
“There are multiple system failures,” including in the criminal justice system, she said.
Speakers at an event Monday to release the report said policies that affect other public institutions, such as the child welfare and the criminal justice systems, do not seem to acknowledge any connection to the issue of homelessness.
Reba Stevens, a member of the ad hoc committee, said that while she was homeless, she went to jail several times for petty theft crimes.
“Every time I went to jail and was released, I had nowhere to go to,” she said.
Those who ran the jails had little knowledge of the emotional and financial challenges the inmates faced in their lives, leading to a “vicious cycle” that frequently would lead to people becoming homeless, she said.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas said the report was “a critical first step to address the collective failings of systems and institutions” that have helped create the “painful disparities that affect so many of our brothers and sisters.”
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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said black people have experienced a long history of discrimination that include decades of being denied housing loans or the ability to buy homes, and frequently being left out of public financial assistance programs such as the GI Bill that was geared toward World War II veterans.
A “racial lens” is necessary to understand Los Angeles, and that “when we bring that lens (to homelessness) we see what our work is with is homelessness,” he said.
The report makes 67 recommendations to address the racial disparities that they say contribute to black people being disproportionately represented among the homeless population.
Among the fixes listed in the report is preventing discrimination against people who receive Section 8 or other similar rental assistance. The report points to a study by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that found rental voucher holders had to go through more than 50 property listings before they were able to find someone who would say they could potentially rent to them. That study also found that voucher holders were denied by landlords in Los Angeles 76 percent of the time.
According to the report, there is now an effort to develop a city ordinance that would bar landlords from discriminating against tenants based on their “source of income,” such as rental assistance vouchers.
Officials said Monday that the report was to be the start of more conversations. Part of the recommendations was to continue researching the role of racism built into public institutions, and into get people experiencing homelessness more involved in the upcoming policymaking process.
The full 115-page report can be read and downloaded here.
