It’s onerous for some Californians — possibly many — to wrap their heads round the concept the homelessness we see on our streets has any connection to slavery.
We’re California, in spite of everything, 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 frequent 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 don’t have any doubts that the historic trafficking of 12 million Black individuals to American shores is instantly tied to the Black poverty and pain on our West Coast streets at this time.
“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 said in a study released recently.
That’s a fierce little bit of truth-telling that will shock those that haven’t been listening to 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 many who adopted California’s reparations activity pressure and for many Black People, the findings are hardly groundbreaking.
Slavery become 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 put money into Black communities led to generations of state-enforced poverty and an absence of housing that builds wealth and stability.
Poverty grew to become an excuse for surveillance and criminalization — together with violent over-policing, baby protecting companies 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 a couple of unhealthy individuals. This was organized,” stated Margot Kushel, head of the Benioff initiative and one of many authors of the examine, 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 appears 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 12 months, in hopes of turning the suggestions of California’s reparations activity pressure into actionable legal guidelines and insurance policies.
“It is a huge endeavor, so you may anticipate a package deal 12 months after 12 months till our work is finished,” defined Assemblymember Lori D. Wilson (D-Suisun Metropolis), chair of the Legislative Black Caucus. “Some will likely be systemic in nature. Some would require direct investments in individuals or communities. All would require the help 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, particularly in prisons the place inmates are often forced to do work for pennies an hour.
All draw a direct line between the dire situations presently confronted by thousands and thousands of Black Californians — together with homelessness and housing insecurity — and the luggage of a long time of discrimination. The members of the Legislative Black Caucus had been clearly drained and unmoved by the various excuses which were given for why reparations can’t change into a actuality.
“Our state wants to deal with these harms,” Wilson stated matter-of-factly.
“America’s wealth was constructed by the compelled labor of trafficked African individuals and their descendants, who had 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 largely 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.”
But it surely 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 workforce’s analysis.
“We have now to know that the period of the colorblind society is a failure,” he stated. “For those who can’t see us, you may’t serve us.”
The fantasy that race doesn’t matter, embedded into legislation by way of Proposition 209, is one purpose why California has been spinning its wheels on homelessness. It possible will proceed to take action — spending billions of tax {dollars} — till lawmakers and the governor begin addressing the causes and coverage choices affecting these almost definitely to finish up on the road.
Whereas Black individuals make up about 7% of California’s inhabitants, they characterize 26% of these with out everlasting houses, based on information pulled from the California Statewide Examine of Folks Experiencing Homelessness (CASPEH). This can come as no shock to anybody who has taken a stroll by Skid Row.
Sure, we’d like extra housing. And sure, we’d like extra companies.
However what of the roughly 75% of these Black unhoused Californians who’re males, a lot of whom got here instantly out of an extended keep in county jail or a stint in jail? They had been launched with maybe a couple hundreds bucks from the state and few if any choices apart from a fast slide into homelessness.
It’s a demographic Kushel factors out ought to be simpler to assist as a result of we all know who they’re and the place they’re earlier than they change into unhoused. We simply select to not do it.
What of the 80% of the Black individuals dwelling on our streets who merely misplaced their housing? They had been hit with an sickness, for instance, or a job loss, discrimination from landlords unwilling to hire 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 dwelling with out houses got here from excessive poverty? Those that had a spot of their very own, their title on a lease earlier than shedding shelter, made about $1,200 a month. Those that had been dwelling off the grace of others had been incomes solely about $960 a month.
Not all Black individuals are poor, in fact. Removed from it. However due to the lasting harms of slavery and discriminatory housing insurance policies, poverty continues 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, based on the examine. And, all through the pandemic, the racial wealth gap has actually increased, for a distinction that now tops $240,000.
Unsurprisingly, residence possession numbers are simply as bleak. Census information from 2023 discovered 75% of white households owned their houses. Simply 45% of Black households owned theirs — up just 3% from 1960, when it was authorized to discriminate in opposition to Black homebuyers in California.
Whereas many elected officers have been wringing their arms in regards to the nexus of habit, poverty and homelessness, it’s value noting that Black individuals had been statistically much less more likely to report abusing onerous medication than different demographics, regardless of the stereotypes and the criminalization.
That so many Black individuals had 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 potential answer.
Kara Younger Ponder, the examine’s lead writer, stated most homeless Black Californians informed the researchers that ongoing funds of lower than $500 a month (just like a assured revenue) or a one-time, lump-sum cost of $5,000 or $10,000 may get them into housing. The latter is about what’s mandatory for the deposit and first month’s hire 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 companies — much less assist in each space from housing coordinators to medical suppliers.
“They’re nonetheless being handled in another way than individuals of different races,” Younger Ponder stated, making the money funds a essential manner of “circumventing” discrimination.
Within the context of reparations, the concept 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 Instances discovered that California voters oppose such payments by a 2-to-1 margin for Black individuals whose ancestors had been enslaved.
“It has a steep uphill climb, a minimum of from the general public’s viewpoint,” stated Mark DiCamillo, director of the ballot, stated after it was launched in August.
With a state finances deficit that could soon hit $73 billion, there are monetary constraints, too.
Wilson acknowledged that is one purpose why she and different Black lawmakers determined to forgo asking for money funds now. However the larger purpose, she stated, was the shortage of public information about why reparations are even mandatory 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 a variety of misinformation on the market,” Weber stated. “I’m a Californian born and raised. And I assumed all these points occurred within the South, I had no concept of the issues that California had carried out.”
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 most recent 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 induced. The one query is when Californians are going to begin believing it.
“America’s unique sin is the genocide and enslavement of human beings,” stated Jones-Sawyer. “America’s second best sin is watching it occur, and pretending that it by no means did.”
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