Uprooting a cause of homelessness

Across the nation and especially in our major cities, racism and homelessness are deeply intertwined. Historical and ongoing discrimination in housing, jobs, health care and criminal justice have resulted in high rates of homelessness among people of color. When economic vulnerability — not just for individuals, but for entire families — combines with escalating housing costs, homelessness becomes inevitable for tens of thousands of people of color each year.

Beginning in late 2016, San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing partnered with the Massachusetts-based Center for Social Innovation to launch the Supporting Partnerships for Anti-Racist Communities initiative. SPARC has been collaborating with the homelessness department and the homeless service organizations it funds to conduct research around the intersection of race and homelessness. The goal is to generate solutions to the crisis of homelessness among communities of color.

The research results are startling. While black San Franciscans make up just 5.5 percent of the city’s general population, more than 40 percent of the city’s homeless population is black. Compare this to the proportion of white San Franciscans in the general population (48 percent) and in the homeless population (44 percent). We know that the black community is not alone in facing inequities in homelessness. For example, the LGBTQ communities experience disproportionate impacts as well. But the results of this study indicate structural policies and issues that target communities of color.

The research team conducted qualitative interviews to document the unique experiences of homelessness for people of color. These oral histories represent the wisdom of lived experience, and point to factors that lead to homelessness, as well as barriers to exiting homelessness.

One telling finding is that people of color were far more likely to experience homelessness because their close friends and families were on the brink themselves and could not step in to help with back rent, or car payments, or medical bills to prevent homelessness.

On a positive note, the data also showed that people of color are exiting homelessness in San Francisco at a rate proportional to their share of the homeless population overall. Nevertheless, people of color identified multiple challenges as they attempted to exit homelessness:

Lack of safe, decent, affordable housing;

Few opportunities for economic mobility; and

Disproportionate impact of criminal justice system involvement.

To address these barriers and the root causes of homelessness, recommendations have emerged among the researchers, the city and San Francisco service organizations, including: Build capacity for organizations led by and serving communities of color; Focus on equitable housing placement for people of color in housing administered by the department of homelessness.

One promising area is the city’s coordinated entry system, which offers the possibility of minimizing bias in the social services system.

While these steps are focused on homelessness, this issue is indicative of the larger one of racial inequity in our community. Through an executive order, I have directed city departments and the Department of Human Resources to improve our recruiting, training, reporting and communications to ensure that the city’s workforce reflects the diversity of our communities and that workers have equal opportunities.

These approaches to promoting equity must extend beyond city departments, to the nonprofit providers within the homelessness response system and ultimately to people accessing services and housing.

Colorblind solutions do not work for a problem that is, in many ways, a symptom of the structural racism embedded in the city and the nation as a whole. It is the responsibility of people from all sectors of the community to address these issues. That includes nonprofit organizations, government agencies, private businesses, the tech sector, the faith community, and others.

When we take an eyeswide-open approach to the racial inequities that drive homelessness, only then can we begin to create lasting solutions.

We can do this. We are developing tools to help prevent people from becoming homeless, shelter people when necessary and help people exit homelessness faster than ever before. We can also work together to root out and dismantle systems created long ago to disenfranchise and oppress with modern systems designed to create opportunity and empower people. That is how we will make a long-term difference here in San Francisco.