Study finds that more than 50 percent of homeless are Black

African Americans, despite making up just 13 percent of the U.S. population, account for a staggeringly disproportionate chunk of the nation’s homeless population, according to a government report, reports ABC News. In 2019, an estimated 568,000 Americans experienced homelessness, with African Americans making up about 4 percent of that total, according to the annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress. The total figure in 2018 was about 553,000. The disparity was starker when looking at the number of homeless people with children: African Americans accounted for about 52 percent of that population, with Whites accounting for about 35 percent, the report said. In contrast, 48 percent of all people experiencing homelessness were White compared with 77 percent of the total U.S. population, while people who identify as Hispanic or Latino represented about 22 percent of the homeless population, but only 18 percent of the overall population. “African Americans have remained considerably overrepresented among the homeless population compared to the U.S. population,” the report said. “This report demonstrates continued progress toward ending homelessness, but also a need to re-calibrate policy to make future efforts more effective and aligned with the unique needs of different communities.” The U.S. Housing and Urban Development report, which came out earlier this month, was based on “Point-In-Time Estimates of Homelessness” taken on a single night in January 2019. Advocates point to the compounding effects of long-standing discrimination and inequalities within the country’s housing, criminal justice and health care systems to explain why African Americans make up such a large portion of the homeless population compared with their overall proportion of the general population.