National homelessness experts and local leaders say such personal questions exacerbate racial disparities in the ranks of the nation’s unhoused, particularly as more people experiencing homelessness compete for scarce taxpayer-subsidized housing amid a deepening affordability crisis.
Vulnerability questionnaires were created to determine how likely a person is to get sick and die while homeless, and the system has been adopted widely around the country over the past decade to help prioritize who gets housing. The more a homeless person is perceived to be vulnerable, the more points they score on the questionnaire and the higher they move in the housing queue. The surveys are being singled out for worsening racial disparities by systematically placing homeless white people at the front of the line, ahead of their Black peers — partly because the scoring awards more points for using health care, and relies on trust in the system, both of which favor white people.
Black people make up 13.7% of the overall U.S. population yet account for 32.2% of the nation’s homeless population. White people, including some people of Hispanic descent, make up 75% of the country and represent 55% of America’s homeless.
“It’s racist in a systemic way,” said Marc Dones, a California-based policy director at the University of California-San Francisco and a lead researcher for one of the nation’s largest studies analyzing the Black homeless population. “If you’re a white person, the more likely you are to rank higher than if you’re a Black person, so you’re more likely to get selected for housing.”
Local leaders say part of the problem is becoming homeless in the first place and economic disadvantages that drive more Black people into homelessness, including placement in foster care and higher rates of eviction and joblessness. But once homeless, helping Black people get into stable housing becomes more elusive.
In Los Angeles County, home to more homeless people than any other county in the country, 31% of homeless people are Black, though the overall Black population accounts for 9%. In Austin, Black people account for nearly 32% of the homeless population, compared with 7.6% overall. And in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, Black people represent 42% of the homeless population but just 12% of the overall population.