From the Streets to the State: Confronting Homelessness and Racial Injustice in California's Shadows

As I walked through the bustling streets of Los Angeles, the stark reality of homelessness struck a chord within me, igniting a conversation that goes beyond mere statistics. Weaving through history and personal narratives, I engage with the UC San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative's study that illuminates the systemic roots of racial injustice leading to the disproportionate number of black individuals facing homelessness. This episode peels back the layers of legislative efforts by California's reparations task force, including state apologies, compensation for historic land seizures, and a reevaluation of prison labor practices, aiming to right the wrongs of our past and present.

The contrast between the opulent lifestyles of California's elite and the deprivation of Skid Row's residents lays bare the societal urgency of addressing homelessness. The power of language emerges as a tool for change, as we transition from describing those without homes as "homeless" to "unhoused," reflecting a shift towards empathy and action. Sharing a page from my own life story, I reflect on the safety net my grandparents provided during a time of personal housing insecurity. This episode isn't just about understanding the complexities of homelessness; it's a clarion call to recognize our shared humanity and the reparative steps we must take as a society to ensure a dignified life for all.

Chapters

• 0:02 Reparations for Homelessness
• 7:35 Impact of Homelessness on Society

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Morning bitches and dolls. If no one told you they love you today, then I love you because you're you. Well, it's been a few days since you took Takbabi, came on to record her podcast, but I just want to do read something from the LA Times because, you know, one of my platforms is homelessness and that is a big, big deal here in Los Angeles, so I'm sure it is everywhere in the world. So I wanted to read this article by Erica D Smith and Anita Chabria in the LA Times today A possible solution to homelessness reparations.

Speaker 1: 0:49

Wow, it's hard for some Californians maybe many to wrap their heads around the idea that the homelessness we see on our streets has any connection to slavery. Interesting, we are California, after all, supposedly a free state. We like to think of ourselves as far away, both in ideology and from the brutal brutality that built the South, although slavery was common during our Gold Rush era in snaring not only black people but also Latino and members of the indigenous community. But researchers at the UC San Francisco Benioff homelessness and housing initiative have no doubts that the historical trafficking of 12 million black people to American shores is directly tied to the black poverty and pain on our West Coast streets today. Wow. The over presentation of black people in the homeless population arises from 400 years of anti-black racism entrenched in the structures, institutions, ideologies and social norms of American life, starting with slavery, the researchers said in a study released this month. That's a fierce bit of truth-telling that may shock those who have been paying attention to discussions about reparations the need to make right the wrongs of systematic racism and compensate black people for the lasting harms of slavery. But for those who followed California's reparations task force and for most black Americans, the findings are hardly groundbreaking. The report returned it to Jim Crow laws and lynchings in the South.

Speaker 1: 2:45

To escape, black people fled to the northern yes, the west coast. Yet upon their arrival, redlining and a refusal to invest in black communities led to generations, generations, generations. Oh my goodness, let me see I can never find anything. I'm just an old hag. Here we go Of state. You know this is a podcast. It's like put together with chewing gum Of state enforced poverty and a lack of housing that builds wealth and stability. Poverty became an excuse for surveillance and criminalization, including violent overpolicing, child protective services, breaking apart families and the mass incarceration of black men. And here we are with black Americans in such an economically and socially precarious situation that a single misfortune can end in homelessness. This didn't just happen by accident and it didn't just happen because there were a few bad people.

Speaker 1: 4:07

This was organized, said Margaret Cushill, head of the Benny Orff Initiative and one of the authors of the study which recommends that reparations in the form of cash payments are needed to combat homelessness in the black community. This is the strongest case for reparations rights. That feels like a conversation that, if we are being honest, we need to have. Okay, it's certainly the case being made by the California Legislative Black Caucus. Last week, its members gathered in Sacramento for a news conference to form, formulally performed, formally announced 14 bills that plan to introduce and support this year in hopes of turning the recommendations of the reparations task force into actionable laws and policies. This is a massive undertaking, so you can expect a package year after year until our work is done.

Speaker 1: 5:11

Lori D Wilson, democrat from Sioux City, sioux Sun City, chairman of the caucus. Some will be systematic in nature. Some will require direct investments in people or communities. All will require the support of the legislature and the governor. One of the initial bills calls for a formal apology from the state about time. Another demands compensation for land seized in the racist acts of eminent domains such as Bruce's Beach, hello. And another would ban involuntary servitude, namely in prisons where inmates are forced to do work for pennies and hour. All draw a direct line between the dire conditions currently faced by millions of black Californians, including homelessness and housing insecurity, and the baggage of decades of discrimination.

Speaker 1: 6:10

The members of the legislative black caucus were clearly tired and unmoved by the many excuses that have been given for why reparations can't become reality. Wow, our state needs to address those arms. Wilson said, matter of factly, whoo, hello. I mean, this is just such a great article about the belief that that what has happened has led directly to homelessness. So anyway. But it was perhaps assembly member Corey Jackson, democrat from Paris, who best summed up the case for reparations, the same case by made by Cushill and born out of our deems research. We have to understand that the era of the colorblind society is a failure. He didn't. He said if you can't see us, you can serve us. The fantasy that race doesn't matter, embedded into law via proposition 209, is one reason California has been spinning its wheels on homelessness. It probably will continue to do so, spending billions of tax dollars until lawmakers and the governor start addressing the causes and policies decisions affecting those most likely to end up on the street.

Speaker 1: 7:35

Let me tell you my experience. The other day I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful part in a film and we filmed on Sunday. So as I was driving, the directions were go through six street, and I've lived in California since 1976 and then again in 1980. And back then six street was beautiful. So I drove through six street from the 110 Harbor freeway and it was filled with people who were living on the street as I drove through and my heart broke when I saw all of this. I just couldn't believe so many people men, women, children, babies living on the street. And as I drove through six towards the six street bridge, there was no homelessness. It was an enclave that I drove into while working that had no homeless, completely like a different world.

Speaker 1: 8:40

Not that I'm saying that this could be the answer to homelessness reparations, but it could help, it could be a start. So remember that America's original sin is the genocide and enslavement of human beings. Okay, joan Sawyer said America's second greatest sin is watching it happen and pretending that it never did. And homelessness right from the beginning, when I started doing my podcast, has been a big thing for me and I was hoping our mayor could help us with it and so far I haven't seen anything that really has happened to affect what's going on with homelessness. But I'm praying that maybe, just maybe, reparations might help the homeless.

Speaker 1: 9:32

So, or they don't like to call them homeless anymore. What did they call them? Let me think I forget, like I don't know. I can't remember their name. Now. It's not homelessness, it's a shoot. I wish I could remember unhoused, but it's homelessness. So you tick, tock, bobby loves you and I just briefly thought I would bring this up because the homeless population, the unhoused population in Los Angeles hurts me more than I can even begin to say, because it as a child and I think the unhoused of the time, or a lot of the time, if not for my grandparents' apartment and taking us in, we would be homeless. I know what I'm talking about and don't forget, if nobody told you they love you, today I love you because you are, you Be yourself.