Black Homelessness a Sign of Where History Still Needs to Go

Well, we’re still In the midst of commotions created by our President and his choices for some top-level officials.

We’re also in the midst of Black History Month — a time when we’re supposed to pay more attention than we usually do to important people and events that brought blacks in America and thus America itself to where we are now.

A worthwhile endeavor. We may even discover the up-and-coming Frederick Douglass.

I’m taking a different tack, though one that’s far from unique. Where does the black stream of American history have yet to go? That’s a much larger question than I’m prepared — or indeed, suitable — to answer.

So I’ll d return to an issue that’s still drawing people to my blog — why homeless people don’t work or do, but are homeless anyway.

My last post on the issue ended with a bare mention of race discrimination. I left it hanging because it’s one of those complex cause-effect factors.

I’ll try to disentangle some of them here, conscious that I’m over-simplifying what merits a book, but also that those factors speak to the larger question I led off with.

Black Over-Represented Among Homeless

Homelessness itself is as good a starting point as any, since it’s unusually common for blacks. They represent 39.1% of all homeless people, according to the latest breakout from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

That’s less than 10% smaller than the percent of homeless whites — and nearly three times the percent of blacks in the U.S. population as a whole.

High Black Poverty Rates

Nobody needs a post to tell them that people of all races are homeless because they can’t afford housing. That itself is over-simple. Some can afford housing, with or without a subsidy, but still may still have no safe, stable place to live.

Criminal records pose a barrier to both privately-owned and public housing. More on that below. We need here to recall that they’re not the only records that can keep people out of housing they can afford.

Merely having been poor at some time in the past can keep people out — even housing a federal voucher would subsidize — because landlords commonly check credit histories. Not out of idle curiosity, of course.

But lack of ready money accounts for a lot. And the black poverty rate, like the homeless rate is disproportionately high — and has been ever since the Census Bureau started breaking out its survey results by race.

Which takes us to work issues. Obviously, since people who have good-paying jobs can pay for housing, though not necessarily where they want it. And, as we all know, the readiest path to those jobs, is a good education.

Labor Market Disadvantages Linked to Persistent Segregation

Blacks’ disadvantages in the labor market date back to slavery, when some freed by former masters or self-liberated worked for pay, but far more, still-enslaved were denied any education.

The Jim Crow laws that replaced slavery didn’t prohibit educating blacks, but generally allowed it only in schools that were, as the Supreme Court eventually found, “separate but unequal,” inherently so, though they were also often unequal in other ways.

Federal laws notwithstanding, blacks remain segregated in many communities due in part to local housing policies, e.g., zoning, discriminatory housing practices, and vestiges of past discrimination by the federal government.

Disadvantages to living in neighborhoods — or whole communities — where policies have concentrated blacks are themselves a cause-effect tangle, reflected in the high black poverty rate.

A major, though not the only reason for the rate is lack of marketable skills — literacy, including now computer proficiency and, beyond that, a formal education credential, which employers use as a threshold sign of those skills.

Schools in high-poverty neighborhoods generally have less money than those in well-off neighborhoods and they need more to ensure that the disadvantages of poverty don’t hold children back.

This issue is far from new and hasn’t garnered much by way of consensus on solutions. I may return to it, especially now that desegregation and equal educational opportunities have again become front-page controversies.

For now, the end result will have to suffice. For too many black youth, it’s is lack of a high-school diploma or the equivalent — the minimal qualification for most jobs — and virtually all paying enough to make housing affordable.

Growing up and going to school in a high-poverty neighborhood may not altogether account for this. We’ve also got some persuasive evidence that black students don’t get a fair shake.

For example, they’re far more likely than their white peers to incur punishments that not only deter them from learning, but can tempt them into criminal behaviors — or at the very least, gain them criminal records. And so we loop back ….

Disproportionate Criminal Justice

It’s common knowledge by now that our criminal justice system sweeps in a far higher percent of blacks than whites. Police practices of various sorts put them at higher risk, according to reliable local investigations..

We’ve reasons to question whether they’re treated equally thereafter — how they’re charged, if at all, whether they’re actually sent to jail or prison, whether they’re sent back for failing to comply with parole requirements they can’t meet, including payments of court fees and fines.

Now, as I said, public housing authorities and owners of federally-subsidized housing must bar people who’ve been convicted of certain drug offenses, but some go considerably further.

Private-sector landlords generally may pick and choose tenants, though with a recently-announced constraint that may not remain a federal fair housing enforcement policy.

The weeding out helps account for the high black homeless rate. Whether sheltered or living in some place “not meant for human habitation,” homeless people are likely to be on the streets most of each day.

That in itself can lead to a criminal record, even for such harmless behaviors as resting on a park bench or sleeping under a bridge because there’s no room in a shelter—or the shelter’s too unsafe.

And so we’ve got a loop-closer, though hardly one that accounts for either the high black homeless rate or the closely-related poverty rate.

Like the other factors I’ve cited, these are more or less systemic. We mustn’t, however, levy the whole blame on systems. Every one of the factors I’ve cited affords evidence of out-and-out discrimination.

Another piece of the puzzle I’ll have to leave for another day. But even this much means, of course, that we’ve every reason to recognize the many millions who overcame — and did so much to make many of our worst policies past history.

But it also reminds us that we’ve got a long way to go — and right now, urgent needs to preserve the progress we’ve made.

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Hurricane Sandy and King Lear

One of the incurable symptoms of my former life as an English Lit. professor is that fragments of works I used to teach pop into my head. Mostly lines from Shakespeare — and none more frequently than passages from King Lear.

As I sat cozily inside, listening to the rain and wind Sandy had brought, I thought again about the half-mad old king out on the heath in the storm.

Brief synopsis for those whose Shakespeare is a little rusty.

Lear has given his lands — and the power that went with them — to his wicked daughters, trusting they’ll provide a home for him and the knights he’s kept as some symbolic vestige of his authority.

They’ve told him he doesn’t need the knights and has to get rid of them. So he rushes in a fury out of the gates (promptly locked behind him) and onto the open wasteland. It’s nighttime and storming.

Lear then willfully prolongs his exposure. He rants in self-pity and anger. Then comes a pivot to the passage I silently recite:

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp,
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou may’st shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.

Lear has told his daughters that they shouldn’t be judging whether he needs his knights. “Our basest beggars are in the poorest thing superfluous,” he said.

Now he understands that he hadn’t thought about these poor people while he had more than enough wealth to feed, clothe and shelter them — and that their basic human needs are different from his wants.

I’m not suggesting that our policymakers and the vested interests they listen to should have stood outside and let Sandy pelt them.

Even a deep imaginative excursion into what the houseless experience could be cleansing psychic medicine, i.e., the “physic” Lear enjoins.

The end result would surely be an altered calculus of what we can afford — and a world that seems more just to all of us.

End of lecture. Test next Tuesday, unless you’ve already voted.

Interagency Council Has Big Plans, Less Focus Or Funds For Ending Homelessness

The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness has now released its strategic plan. As I earlier wrote, the plan is supposed to establish priorities and strategies that the 19 agency members will jointly pursue to prevent and end homelessness within a specific timeframe.

I’ve been sitting here trying to decide what I think about it — and how I can tell you what’s in it within reasonable blog length. These two things are not unrelated.

First off, the plan is quite a piece of work — 59 pages, plus prefatory material, notes and acknowledgments. And it’s not only long, but very complex.

Four major goals, 10 objectives ranged under five major themes, 52 strategies divided among the objectives, three performance measures, tables reflecting specific agencies’ responsibilities for implementation, a review of what’s known about three major populations of homeless people and more.

This, I think, is its strength — and also its weakness.

On the positive side, it reflects a good grasp of the complexity of the problem. It’s refreshing to see a broader focus than the Bush administration’s intensive focus on chronically homeless people.

Yes, it’s got a goal to “finish the job of ending chronic homelessness in five years.” But it also sets goals and timeframes for preventing and ending homelessness among veterans and for families, youth and children. There’s also a goal sans timeframe for the unnamed populations, e.g., homeless individuals who aren’t veterans and/or classifiable as chronically homeless.

The policy shift is reflected in the acknowledgment that, for most homeless people, the problem is a gap between income and the cost of housing. Also in the themes, which include increasing both access to stable, affordable housing and economic security.

And in objectives for the latter — more “meaningful and suitable employment” for homeless people and those at high risk of homelessness and better “access to mainstream programs and services,” i.e., those not specifically targeted to homeless populations.

There’s a flip side to the reach, complexity and apparent interest in satisfying a very large and diverse group of diverse stakeholders. All aspects of the problem — and related strategies — get equal billing.

So many to-do’s for so many entities and nothing I can see to identify first-order priorities. True, the plan is supposed to be a five-year “roadmap.” But what does it provide, except for initiatives already in the President’s proposed budget, to tell agencies what they should do first and foremost?

At the same time, I see an unspoken awareness of limited federal capacities. We read a lot about interagency collaboration, better program integration and dissemination of information and best practices. The heavy lifting seems largely left to state and local public agencies and to private organizations.

Which brings me to the elephant in the room. Where’s the money for all this? Certainly not in the revenue-strapped budgets of state and local governments or in those of the nonprofits and other community organizations the President’s prefatory letter alludes to.

It’s not in his proposed budget either, notwithstanding what the plan terms its “signature initiatives” for veterans, families with children and chronically homeless people.

I found only one specific reference to new federal funding — a strategy that simply says “fund the National Housing Trust.” Perhaps this refers to the $1 billion the President is again requesting. How can it be a strategy for the ICH members?

Efforts to secure any capital funding for the Trust have thus far gone nowhere. Doubt they’re going to fare much better in a Congress that’s moving to lower the President’s ceiling on most discretionary domestic spending.

In any event, $1 billion would be a mere down payment on what would be needed to significantly increase the supply of rental housing that the target population, i.e., extremely low-income households, can afford.

Neil Donovan, Executive Director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, has expressed some cautiously-worded reservations along these lines. He welcomes the plan’s vision, overall framework and commitment to engaging all stakeholders. But he finds “many of the methods … vague and without firm commitment to allocate funds and implement strategies.”

He warns of a double standard. Federal grant applications require local communities to identify clear numeric goals, timetables, funding and implementing bodies “to ensure they move from planning to action.” Thus far, nothing comparable in the federal strategic plan.

Exactly. It’s a fine thing to have the President on record as saying that “ending homelessness in America must be a national priority.” But it will take a whole lot more than the ICH roadmap to get us there.

More Doubling Up In Housing, Especially By Families

I recently wrote that we’ve no idea how many people are living doubled up with friends or relatives. Still true for the District of Columbia, but not for the nation as a whole.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness has issued a brief on doubling up during the 2005-8 period. Doubling up here means “living in a housing unit with extended family, friends or other non-relatives due to economic hardship,” which NAEH defines as “earning no more than 125% of the federal poverty level.” In 2008, that meant a maximum of $13,000 for a single individual and $22,000 for a family of three.

We learn some interesting things. For example, in 2008:

• More than 4.8 million low-income people were living doubled up–5% more than in 2005.
• Nearly three-quarters of them had incomes below the federal poverty line.
• A third of them were in deep poverty, i.e., living at least 50% below the FPL.
• The percent of doubled-up people who were in families had increased by 8.5%, to somewhat over 2.1 million.
• Yet the percent of families doubled-up had increased by 3.5%–to just under 800,000. So it would seem that more family members were living together doubled up.
• While more single individuals than families were living doubled up, the percent increase for individuals was much smaller–less than 2%.

Doubling up is certainly preferable to living on the street or in an emergency shelter. But, as NAEH says, it’s often a prelude to literal homelessness.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Annual Homelessness Assessment Report for 2008, 25.8% of single individuals and 42.3% of families who weren’t homeless before they entered a shelter or transitional housing had stayed the night before with family or friends.

Perhaps the family member or friend had agreed to house them for only a night or two. Perhaps accommodating them had become too inconvenient. Perhaps frictions arose, as they can among any people living together. Perhaps everybody got evicted.

We see some of these risks of homelessness in other NAEH figures.

• In 2008, more than 1.7 million doubled-up people (34.6%) were in households with severe housing burdens, i.e. paying 50% or more of their income for rent.
• Of these people, 22%–somewhat over 1.3 million–were living in over-crowded conditions.
• Both the number with severe housing burdens and the number in over-crowded conditions were higher in 2008 than in 2005.

What I would guess these figures reflect are the combined impacts of the onset of the recession and the accelerating shortage of affordable rental housing for low-income people. If so, then we would expect more recent figures to be worse.

Last year’s HEARTH Act, which reauthorized homeless programs administered by HUD, expanded the definition of “homeless” to some doubled-up families. The NAEH brief says that communities “will now serve them through their homeless assistance programs.”

Don’t we wish. Here in the District, the homeless services program seems unable to cope even with all the families who’ve got no place to live at all. And with budget-slashing across the country, I doubt many other programs are ready to take on more.