According to Cal Matters, California’s housing crisis is nothing new for many Black Californians. Systemic racism in public policy and the private housing market has long made finding a safe, stable and affordable home in the Golden State a more difficult prospect for its roughly 2.2 million Black residents than for white people.
“When they say real estate is about location, location, location — it’s actually about race,” said Mary M. Lee, former deputy director for the equity-focused research and advocacy group PolicyLink and veteran advocate for fair housing policies in Los Angeles.
“It isn’t the South, it’s not Cleveland, but historically (Los Angeles) has been segregated,” said Lee. “And California — I like to say people live next to each other, not with each other.”
On the other side of the housing coin are our unhoused Black Californians. Cal Matters reports, Out of the “150,000 Californians who experience homelessness on any given night, nearly 30% are Black people. Several Bay Area regions, including San Francisco and Marin County, have some of the highest rates of Black homelessness in the country. No major California ethnic group is as over-represented in the state’s homeless count as Black people.”