Who Are the Homeless? Centering Anti-Black Racism and the Consequences of Colorblind Homeless Policies

Abstract

Since first becoming a major social issue in the 1980s, homelessness has been a racialized problem in the United States. Its disproportionate impact on Black Americans is primarily driven by structural racism and the limited housing and employment opportunities for Black Americans. The first major federal legislation to address the needs of the United States’ homeless population—the Stewart B. McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 omitted the root causes of Black housing instability, thereby proving ineffective at mitigating Black homelessness. As a result, Black Americans remain disproportionately impacted today. In addition to being neglected by the McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act, Black men and women experiencing homelessness are more likely to be discriminated against than any other racial group. For example, Black men are more likely to be arrested than anyone else, and Black women are the most likely to experience hyper-surveillance. This paper uses the Public Identity Framework to argue that in the 1980s, advocates and opponents of homeless legislation created two contradictory public personas to shape public discourse and policies for the homeless. A colorblind public persona was used to pass the McKinney–Vento Homeless Act; meanwhile, the public persona of the “underclass” was used to criminalize and shame the homeless. Both personas operated concurrently to create a dual public identity for the homeless that influenced policy and ultimately harmed Black people.

Filling in the gaps: examining the prevalence of Black homelessness in Canada

“…Although literature on Black PEH in the Canadian context may be limited, there is a larger body of literature on Black homelessness in the USA that provides useful insights due to the similarities in cultural context. Findings from Springer et al (2013) are consistent with this literature from the USA, which demonstrates that higher rates of homelessness due to sociostructural factors (Fusaro et al, 2018), including racism and discrimination (Edwards, 2021), and individual trauma, disproportionately impact Black people (Rhee and Rosenheck, 2020). Consistent with Springer et al (2013), research on Black homeless youth in the USA also found that negative experiences in school, including racial microaggressions and disparities in discipline and educational expectations, created hidden barriers that prevented youth from seeking support with their housing situation (Edwards, 2020).…”

The first primer for the QuantCrit‐curious critical race theorist or psychologist: On intersectionality theory, interaction effects, and AN(C)OVA/regression models

“…Uncritical interpretations of the EHP dataset run the risk of advancing racist and absurd conclusions about unhoused persons and the assessment of their needs. The most pernicious narrative of the results would explain the plights of unhoused people of color in terms of biological or cultural inferiority in lieu of race‐neutral policy and ecosystemic racism (Edwards, 2021; Paul et al., 2020). Racist psychologists might incorrectly explain VI‐SPDAT score differentials in terms of fixed biological and/or personal traits.…”

Race matters in addressing homelessness: A scoping review and call for critical research

“…When these images become “one's mental image of those homeless families whom the citizenry should feel moved to help, one is likely to resist poverty policies that shift goods and power to groups that depart from the image in obvious ways” (White, 1991, p. 306). Thus, framing the problem as individual discouraged changes to systems of housing, wages, criminal justice, and welfare that were the root drivers of homelessness—systems that were also racialized, and particularly anti‐Black (Edwards, 2021). Despite this dynamic in early research, a subset of literature examined race and homelessness closely.…”