No one can walk past block after block of tents on skid row, or lift the tarps clinging to Hollywood’s freeway off-ramps, and fail to notice the outsized presence of Black people living on Los Angeles’ sidewalks and encampments.
But despite official acknowledgments that systemic racism is driving homelessness — and a major study on how to address it — the persistent and staggering over-representation of Black people in L.A.’s homeless ranks barely budged this year, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s homeless count report released Friday.
According to a draft report, 21,509 Black people were without permanent, habitable housing during the count in January — 34% of Los Angeles’ homeless population of 64,000 (Pasadena, Long Beach and Glendale do their own counts, bringing the county homeless total to 66,000).
The Black share of homelessness has hovered for years around that percentage point, in a county where only 8% of residents are African American.
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