Supreme Court homelessness case holds extra significance for Black Californians

Last month, the Supreme Court announced it would hear a case that, at first glance, may appear to have little importance to Californians.

After all, Grants Pass v. Johnson concerns an Oregon city boasting a population of only 40,000 and commanding none of the cultural importance of Portland, Salem or even Eugene. But Grants Pass is about to throw California’s racial politics into a state of upheaval.

Why? The case concerns whether or not cities can legally punish homeless people for sleeping on public land.

California’s housing crisis is no secret. According to federal data, we have 181,399 homeless individuals in our state. That makes California home to the largest homeless population, the largest percentage of the nation’s homeless population, and – critically for the Grants Pass case – nearly half (49%) of all unsheltered homeless individuals in the U.S.

In California, 68% of its homeless population is unsheltered.

These numbers are disturbing regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. But here in California, homelessness is undoubtedly a racial issue. Black Californians, who make up around 7% of the population, represent 26% of homeless people in the Golden State. One-third of homeless Californians over 50 are Black. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the city of Grants Pass, it will be older Black people without homes, nearing or past retirement age, who suffer most.

How did we get here? No discussion of homelessness and race can ignore the long history of redlining. The explicitly discriminatory financial rules associated with this practice were designed to lock Black people out of the housing market in white neighborhoods. This in turn prevented Black people from building the generational wealth that has powered so much of California’s economic growth to date.

Nor can we overlook downzoning, a process that occurred across many California cities, particularly in the 1970s. In order to prevent new population growth – especially among Black and Latino communities – cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and others capped the construction of new housing units. This ensured that California’s Black residents could not move into white neighborhoods and white townships, confining them to slums. 

This, in large part, is why California remains so segregated today. Black Americans, along with other minority groups, had the door slammed in their faces right when they tried to climb out of poverty. The rules that had facilitated the accumulation of wealth for white Americans were abruptly changed, leaving Californians of color out in the cold.

Homelessness skyrocketed. Fast forward to 2024, and the problem has only deepened.  

What is the solution? We cannot simply wish away the legacies of downzoning and redlining. But we can remake them by destroying the barriers that still deprive so many Black Americans of affordable housing. Many steps must be taken to tackle racial disparities in health care, education and policing – disparities that are often heightened for Black women.

But the first step relates to housing. The tools that have kept Black Californians locked out of housing must be dismantled. New, affordable housing must be built – and made available to people of color – fast. San Francisco, for example, spent 18 months deciding whether it would potentially enable displacement to allow housing on a Nordstrom valet parking lot. Such delays are unacceptable.

As a Black man from Oakland, I understand the fear of gentrification and displacement at the hands of greedy developers who don’t care about the community. After all, it was often Black and brown neighborhoods that were bulldozed for the highways.

But the homelessness crisis is severe, and people need places to live. Demand cannot be wished away. We cannot afford 18-month delays to construction. People in the present cannot live in hypothetical future housing – and now, thanks to the Supreme Court, the clock is ticking faster than ever.