Homelessness among racialized persons

I’m writing an open access textbook on homelessness and have just released Chapter 7, which focuses on homelessness experienced by racialized persons. The PDF version of the full chapter is available here.

Here are 10 things to know:

1. Racialized persons—also known as ‘people of colour’ or ‘racial/ethnic minorities’—are often overrepresented among people experiencing homelessness. Most countries have racist pasts and continue to see ongoing systemic racism, making it challenging for racialized persons to access social services—including housing, income assistance and health care.

2. In order to understand some of the challenges faced by racialized persons, one must understand colonialism. Colonialism can include the forced removal of people from their land, the appropriation of land, the destruction of villages and crops, slavery, and vagrancy laws pertaining to freed slaves. Government-sanctioned violence has driven much of this.

3. Racism is embedded in colonialism. Racism can be defined as “a system of advantages and disadvantages based on race…[This] includes individual‐level beliefs and practices, cultural messages, public policies, and other interconnecting micro‐ and macrolevel dynamics that benefit White people and harm people of color…”[1]

4. Racism makes it more challenging for racialized persons to obtain housing. It also makes it more challenging for them to thrive in educational settings, obtain employment, qualify for income assistance and receive health care. Racism affects who gets targeted by law enforcement officials, who has access to legal representation, who goes to jail and for how long. It impacts which parents (mostly mothers) are targeted by child welfare officials and have their children taken into care. In a nutshell, racism affects the delivery of social services.

5. Within the homeless-serving sector, assessment tools prioritize need for services and that often assess a person’s need or vulnerability. These can create further challenges for racialized persons—much research has found that such triage tools can prioritize White persons over racialized persons.

6. Well-targeted funding enhancements could address some of these challenges. In most countries, social services for racialized persons are severely underfunded; important funding injections could help to both prevent and respond to homelessness among racialized persons. This includes funding for education, employment, healthcare, early childhood development (e.g., daycare), income assistance, housing, eviction prevention, emergency facilities, and homeless outreach services.

7. Representation can also make a difference. According to Olivet et al. (2021), non-profit organizations in the homeless-serving sector “should diversify staff, leadership, and boards of directors to include significant representation by people of color…”[2] Better representation can yield more culturally appropriate services.

8. Programming matters. Whether you operate an emergency shelter, a daytime drop-in service, or housing, it can be beneficial to offer culturally relevant services on a regular basis. Such programming might include music, arts and crafts, language support, and food-related support that might be relevant to racialized persons.

9. Staff training makes a difference. Non-profit agencies should organize staff training on anti-racism, led by racialized persons. This can come in the form of all-day training sessions, and should occur at least once per year. Staff should also be encouraged to seek anti-racism training outside such in-house events in the local community.

10. Ongoing evaluation and oversight is vital. Organizations should endeavour to hold themselves accountable. Accountability mechanisms may include an evaluation framework with inputs, outputs and outcomes specific to racialized clients. It might also include an annual survey specifically for racialized staff and clients. Racialized persons should be involved in the development of any evaluation framework—or at least the portions focused on racialized persons.

In sum. This is a summary of Chapter 7 of a sole-authored, open access interdisciplinary textbook intended to provide an introduction to homelessness for students, service providers, researchers, policy-makers and advocates. All material for this book is available free of charge here. Newly-completed chapters will be uploaded throughout the year.

I wish to thank Sylvia Regnier and Annick Torfs for assistance with this blog post.

[1] Richard, M. K. (2023). Race matters in addressing homelessness: A scoping review and call for critical research. American Journal of Community Psychology.

[2] Olivet, J., Wilkey, C., Richard, M., Dones, M., Tripp, J., Beit-Arie, M., Yampolskaya, S., & Cannon, R. (2021). Racial inequity and homelessness: findings from the SPARC study. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 693(1), 82-100.