It is difficult for some Californians (perhaps many) to accept the idea that the homeless people we see on our streets have any connection to slavery.
After all, we are California, supposedly a “free” state. We like to think we are removed from both the ideology and brutality that built the South, although slavery was common during our gold rush era, ensnaring not only black people, but also Latinos and indigenous communities.
But researchers at the respected Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco have no doubt that the historic trafficking of 12 million black people to American shores is directly linked to poverty and the pain of blacks on our west coast streets today.
“The overrepresentation of Blacks among the homeless population arises from 400 years of anti-Black racism embedded in the structures, institutions, ideologies, and social norms of American life, beginning with slavery,” the researchers said in a recently published study .
It’s a ferocious display of truth-telling that may surprise those who haven’t been paying attention to discussions about reparations — the need to right the wrongs of systemic racism and compensate Black people for the lasting harms of slavery. But for those who followed the work of California’s reparations task force, and for most black Americans, the findings are hardly groundbreaking.
Slavery evolved into Jim Crow laws and lynchings in the South. To escape, blacks fled to the North and, yes, to the West. However, upon arrival, redlining and a refusal to invest in black communities led to generations of state-imposed poverty and a lack of housing that generated wealth and stability.
Poverty became an excuse for policing and criminalization, including excessive and violent policing, child protective services that separate families, and the mass incarceration of black men. And here we are, with African Americans in such a precarious economic and social situation that a single misfortune can end up on the street.
“This didn’t just happen by accident and it didn’t just happen because there were some bad people. This was organized,” said Margot Kushel, leader of the Benioff initiative and one of the authors of the study, which recommends that reparations in the form of cash payments be needed to combat homelessness in the Black community.
“This is the strongest case for reparations, right?” she said. “It seems like a conversation that, if we’re honest, we should have.”
Without a doubt, it is the argument defended by the California Legislative Black Caucus. Last week, members gathered in Sacramento for a press conference to formally announce 14 bills they plan to introduce and support this year, hoping to turn the California reparations task force’s recommendations into workable laws and policies. .
“This is a huge task, so you can expect a package year after year until our work is done,” explained Assemblywoman Lori D. Wilson (D-Suisun City), chair of the Legislative Black Caucus. “Some will be systemic in nature. Some will require direct investments in people or communities. “Everything will require the support of the Legislature and the governor.”
One of the initial bills calls for a formal apology from the state, another calls for compensation for land confiscated in racist eminent domains like Bruce’s Beach, and another would ban involuntary servitude, specifically in prisons where inmates are often seen forced to work for pennies. one hour.
All draw a direct line between the dire conditions millions of Black Californians currently face (including homelessness and housing insecurity) and the baggage of decades of discrimination. Members of the Legislative Black Caucus were clearly tired and unmoved by the many excuses that have been given to explain why reparations cannot become a reality.
“Our state needs to address those harms,” Wilson said matter-of-factly.
“America’s wealth was built through the forced labor of trafficked Africans and their descendants, who were bought and sold as commodities,” said Assemblymember Akilah Weber (D-La Mesa). “The United States government at all levels enabled or participated in the exploitation, abuse, terrorizing, and murder of people of African descent so that mostly white Americans could profit from their enslavement.”
“This Legislature allowed slave owners to bring their enslaved property as long as they arrived here before 1850,” said Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles), mocking frequent opposition that no reparations are owed because California does not It was a slave state. “Then the California State Supreme Court said slave owners were fine as long as they only stayed temporarily. That is not freedom.”
But perhaps it was Assemblyman Corey Jackson (D-Perris) who best summed up the case for reparations — the same case made by Kushel and born from his team’s research.
“We have to understand that the era of colorblind society is a failure,” he said. “If you can’t see us, you can’t serve us.”
The fantasy that race doesn’t matter, built into the law through Proposition 209, is one of the reasons California has been spinning its wheels on homelessness. It will likely continue to do so (spending billions of tax dollars) until lawmakers and the governor begin to address the causes and policy decisions that affect those most likely to end up on the streets.
While Black people make up about 7% of California’s population, they make up 26% of those without a permanent home, according to data drawn from the California State Study on Homelessness (CASPEH). This won’t surprise anyone who’s taken a walk down Skid Row.
Yes, we need more housing. And yes, we need more services.
But what about the roughly 75% of homeless black Californians who are men, many of whom came straight out of a long stay in county jail or a stint in prison? They were released with perhaps a couple hundred dollars from the state and little to no options but a rapid slide into homelessness.
It’s a demographic that Kushel notes should be easier to help because we know who they are and where they are before they become homeless. We simply choose not to.
What about the 80% of black people living on our streets who simply lost their housing? They were affected by an illness, for example, or by losing a job, or by discrimination from landlords who were unwilling to rent to people with bad credit or complicated backgrounds. Half are over 50 years old and face their old age without accommodation.
And what about the fact that the majority of black people experiencing homelessness come from extreme poverty? Those who had a place of their own, their name on a lease before losing their accommodation, earned about $1,200 a month. Those who lived off the grace of others earned only about $960 a month.
Of course, not all blacks are poor. Far from there. But because of the lasting harms of slavery and discriminatory housing policies, poverty remains disproportionately predictable among blacks, and not just in California.
According to the study, the average white family had wealth of $184,000 in 2019, compared to just $23,000 for the comparable Black family. And throughout the pandemic, the racial wealth gap has actually increased, by a difference that now exceeds $240,000.
Unsurprisingly, homeownership numbers are equally bleak. Data from the 2023 census found that 75% of white households owned their homes. Only 45% of black households owned a home, only 3% more than in 1960, when it was legal to discriminate against black homebuyers in California.
While many elected officials have been wringing their hands over the nexus between addiction, poverty and homelessness, it’s worth noting that blacks were statistically less likely to report hard drug abuse than other demographic groups, despite stereotypes and criminalization.
The fact that so many black people were forced into homelessness without the added push of substance abuse struck Kushel as another example of how precarious black existence can be. “It takes less for them to become homeless,” he said.
To counter this, UCSF researchers propose cash payments as a possible solution.
Kara Young Ponder, lead author of the study, said most homeless black Californians told researchers that ongoing payments of less than $500 a month (similar to a guaranteed income) or a one-time lump sum payment of $5,000 or $10,000 could help them. in the home. The latter refers to what is necessary for the deposit and the first month’s rent for an apartment.
But beyond the simple need for money that all homeless people share, Young Ponder said Black people also reported facing anti-Black bias within the homeless services system: less help in all areas, from coordinators from housing to medical providers.
“They are still treated differently than people of other races,” Young Ponder said, making cash payments a key way to “avoid” discrimination.
In the context of reparations, the idea of cash payments has been controversial (to put it mildly). A poll conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Government Studies and co-sponsored by The Times found that California voters oppose such payments by a 2-to-1 margin for blacks whose ancestors were enslaved.
“It has an uphill climb, at least from the public’s point of view,” Mark DiCamillo, the poll’s director, said after its release in August.
With a state budget deficit that could soon reach $73 billion, there are also financial constraints.
Wilson acknowledged this is one of the reasons she and other black lawmakers decided to stop asking for cash payments now. But the biggest reason, he said, was a lack of public knowledge about why reparations are even necessary and fear that a bill calling for the most unpopular way would fail, dealing a blow to what is quickly becoming a national movement.
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” Weber said. “I am a born and raised Californian. And I thought all these problems happened in the South, I had no idea the things California had done.”
But members of the Legislative Black Caucus have not ruled out a bill calling for cash payments in the future. They say it is undeniable that California laws and policies have systematically oppressed blacks economically, and they are right.
Kushel, Young Ponder and their fellow researchers at UCSF’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative are just the latest to show that black people have been intentionally excluded from wealth and stability, and that reparations may be needed to solve the difficulties they have caused. The only question is when Californians will start believing it.
“America’s original sin is the genocide and enslavement of human beings,” Jones-Sawyer said. “America’s second biggest sin is watching it happen and pretending it never happened.”