A History of American Homelessness (Patreon)

More than a few times in my adult life, I have dealt with periods of homelessness- whether I was sleeping on a friends couch,  crashing at my ex's mom's house, or even sandwiched between a radiator and a wall in an ikea twin bed at my uncle's ex-girlfriend's house. I remember being kicked out of my $800/month room by a petty and fraudulent landlord, having hours to scramble around Harlem looking for a place to stay.  I remember viewing apartments whose landlords  insisted that I prove I earned 5-40x the rent every month (I didn't and couldn't). I didn't end up on the streets, but I ended up on couches and even a floor. Each time, I always had the option to leave New York/California/etc to return back to Charlotte to live with my nana or mother. Not everyone has that privilege, and the outcome can be gruesome.  

According to a US census report by George Carter III, “In 1985, a gap of 4.54 million units existed between the number of low income units and the number of low income households, which became a 5.22-million unit gap by 1991. Four million affordable units were lost from the housing market between 1970 and 1990 when the units were upgraded, converted to condos, or demolished.”  (Source)

In 2019, the National Low Income Housing Coalition reported a shortage of 7.2 million affordable and available rental homes for extremely low income renter households (those with incomes at or below the poverty level or 30% of their area median income). (Source)

This video is very important to me. I've been laying the foundation for  a few months now, with posts like Zip Code, Class, & Racism: Understanding the Cycle of Black Poverty, Black People and Classism, and How To Be Black. In this video, I place black homelessness within the broader American landscape, which I feel like often goes unmentioned in conversations about progression and the black experience. Without adequate public housing and affordable private housing, how does homelessness contribute to the cycle of black poverty, crime, and despair?  How does this tie into past stuff we've talked about? 

Enjoy the vid.

Sources + Further Reading

African Americans And Homelessness: Moving Through History (Roberta Ann Johnson)

From Exclusion to Destitution: Race, Affordable Housing, and Homelessness (George R. Carter III)

The History of Homelessness In the United States (National Academy of Sciences)

What They Didn't Teach Us in Library School (Chip Ward) 

Evicted (Matthew Desmond)

The Color of Law (Richard Rothstein) 

The U.S. Has National Shortage of More Than 7.2 Million Affordable & Available Rental Homes for Families Most in Need

The affordable housing crisis, explained (Patrick Sisson, Jeff Andrews, and Alex Bazeley)

Hoovervilles and Homelessness

Grappling With Native American Homelessness

Once a national model, Utah struggles with homelessness (Gregory Scuggs) 

The surprising holes in our knowledge of America’s homeless population (Andrew Van Dam)

L.A.'s homelessness surged 75% in six years. Here’s why the crisis has been decades in the making (Gale Holland) 

Trump: Homeless people hurt the ‘prestige’ of Los Angeles, San Francisco (Phillip Rucker and Jeff Stein)