African-Americans

Poverty

Homelessness can be seen as the by-product of a rise in the number of people experiencing poverty and an increase in the disparity between the rich and the poor. In fact, many scholars view homelessness simply as an extreme form of poverty. Research suggests that the current homeless population is suffering from more extreme poverty than the homeless population before the 1980s, whose income was three times higher than the income of the current homeless. Some studies have found that the problems of homeless people differ only slightly from the problems of the very poor. For example, some have found that rates of mental illness are much higher in both homeless and [Page 4]matched housed poor individuals (similar to the homeless in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, and/or neighborhood income). Because of the overrepresentation of African-Americans among poor persons in the United States, poverty can be viewed as an important cause of the overrepresentation of African-Americans among the homeless. Roughly 25 percent of African-Americans in the United States live in poverty. In addition, whereas 20 percent of U.S. children live below the poverty line, 50 percent of ethnic minority children live below the poverty line.

A mother and her child get ready to leave their temporary apartment in New York City at 6:30 a.m. for work and school

Mark Peterson/Corbis; used with permission.

Factors that might be driving the increase in the number of poor persons, as well as the increase in the number of poor African-Americans, include welfare reform, gentrification, and a lack of well-paying unskilled jobs. In recent years, “welfare reform” has resulted in a reduction in the services provided to those who are poor. African-Americans appear to be faring worse than other ethnic groups on many factors directly related to poverty, including education, unemployment rates, and the availability of transferable job skills.

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