This article is part of a special collaboration between Michigan in Color and Groundcover News. Read the rest of the joint issue here.
In the last decade, scholars across academia have begun to investigate the phenomenon of homelessness through contemporary, intersectional lenses. Historically, being unhoused has been understood as unimpacted by societal and systemic influences and more often interpreted as resulting from a series of an individual’s choices or circumstances. Modern studies have deemed this framework to be objectively false: homelessness is a complex issue that requires multifaceted approaches in order to determine its root causes as well as its catalysts. As Vijay Mago et al. describes in “Analyzing the impact of social factors on homelessness: a Fuzzy Cognitive Map approach”:
“Homelessness is a complex social problem with a variety of underlying economic and social factors such as poverty, lack of affordable housing, uncertain physical and mental health, addictions, and community and family breakdown. These factors, in varying combinations, contribute to duration, frequency, and type of homelessness … Homelessness is difficult to define, thus governments struggle with uncertainty when creating and implementing policies they hope will effectively manage or eradicate this problem.”
The rise in our unhoused populations is problematized further by concurrent factors that act as limiting and oppressive, such as race, gender, ability and immigrant status. This article takes a look at the demographics of Washtenaw County’s unhoused population along one of those axes, race, in order to demonstrate the dramatic overrepresentation of People of Color in our local community.
In his article “Racialized Homelessness: A Review of Historical and Contemporary Causes of Racial Disparities in Homelessness,” Dr. Matthew Z. Fowle describes the narratives that have formed around homelessness in the last half-century:
“Research examining the prevalence of homelessness by race and ethnicity implies that homelessness prior to the 1980s was predominantly experienced by single older White men. However, a broader understanding of the histories of homelessness among Black, Latinx, and Native American people suggests substantial racial overrepresentation has existed for far longer than the past 40 years—in many cases, for centuries.”
Fowle goes on to identify the early manifestations of what would become “homelessness” in the colonization of America. By making connections to the forced migrations of Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans primarily, Fowle crafts a new narrative — one in which the displacement of People of Color in America is understood as a cultural institution that has been operating since the “conception” of this nation by Europeans. This understanding directly parallels the origins and histories of Washtenaw County and its municipalities. For example, the name “Washtenaw” is an English approximation of the Ojibwe (sometimes “Ojibwa,” “Ojibway” or “Chippewa”) word used to describe the land that various peoples inhabited prior to colonization. Not only is this land stolen and its peoples forced elsewhere, but so are its name and cultural significance.
The Detroit metropolitan area became one of the larger centers of trade and commerce in the late 18th–19th century for the early Midwest. Originally colonized by the French, Indigenous peoples were the first to be enslaved and used in the fur trade industry. These Indigenous slaves were the primary labor force of the area, until wealthy French slave owners and their African slaves began to settle in the region soon after. Harvard professor Dr. Tiya Miles describes these early enslavement practices and demographics in her 2017 book “The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits” as well as her U-M UROP program Mapping Slavery in Detroit. Immigration to (as well as migrations from) Detroit, located in modern neighboring Wayne County, had a significant impact on the racial demographics of surrounding areas in the coming centuries. By the peak of American industrialization and the subsequent Great Migration in the 20th century, Black Americans as well as Latine and Indigenous peoples began to constitute significant portions of the regional population. Upon the collapses of major American manufacturing industries and factories in the Midwest during the mid-20th century, however, newly immigrated populations lacked the social and economic capital to relocate again; thus, many of these communities have remained a part of the makeup of the region.
People of Color in the state of Michigan in general, but Washtenaw County specifically, are demographically underrepresented in the population when compared to the national average. Despite this, People of Color are drastically overrepresented in the unhoused population. Since 2005, the Washtenaw County Continuum of Care (CoC) has published its Point-In-Time (PIT) counts of its unhoused population; these reports include county-wide demographics, as well as interpretations of the data and occasionally plans for improving the current findings. The most recent report, completed in January 2022, found that roughly 211 persons in Washtenaw County met the government definition of chronically unhoused (though in 2020 upwards of 2,800 met the definition of literally unhoused). Of those, 43% identified as Black or African American. While there was a reported decrease in the overall number of unhoused people, as well as a decrease in homelessness for all racial minorities, Black people still represented nearly four times as many unhoused persons as they do people in the general population. Furthermore, the national average of unhoused Black people is 40%; thus in Washtenaw County, Black people specifically are overrepresented in nearly every possible category of homelessness, even in comparison with the rest of the country.
But why is this overrepresentation so dramatic? Let us return to the original remarks from “Analyzing the impact of social factors on homelessness”: empirically, Black-identifying persons suffer from higher rates of mental health disorders (as well as a lack of access to treatment), poverty, inability to build wealth, lack of access to affordable housing and homeownership, among other social factors. To be overrepresented in both the predictive metrics for homelessness as well as the complicating factors makes certain that Black people would be overrepresented in homelessness itself. Beyond being unhoused, exiting homelessness is incredibly difficult for Black people. On this, Teresa Wiltz of Pew Trusts writes:
“People of color are more likely to get pushed into homelessness because they are more likely to have a criminal record, which makes it tough to find housing or a job. Or they have a past eviction. Or they have money to pay the rent, but can’t afford the security deposit to move into a new place. Perhaps the landlord doesn’t accept housing vouchers.”
Historically, housing injustice in Washtenaw county has been fueled by discriminatory housing practices. Racially restrictive homeownership clauses in its most populous cities (that still exist in many current home deeds), such as in Ann Arbor, document the inaccessibility of housing to Washtenaw’s Black residents. Washtenaw also faces a significant opportunity gap in terms of employment and education for its Black residents, stunting upward mobility. Pair this with the state of Michigan’s eviction crisis in a country where Black people — specifically Black Women — are disproportionately affected by eviction, and the causes of the racialization of Washtenaw’s unhoused population become clear.
Thus, Black people are notably more likely to be unhoused and stay unhoused, especially in Washtenaw County. This isn’t some new discovery, unfortunately: MLive reported on the racial disparity found in the CoC’s reporting in 2017, and in 2018, Washtenaw’s own CoC identified the racial disparity in their reporting and published its assessment of its data collection methodologies in order to ensure that the overrepresentation was not in error; and though not specifically focused on the racial disparity, The Michigan Daily reported on Ann Arbor’s homeless crisis in 2020 and 2021.
Ultimately, the racialization of Washtenaw’s homeless crisis is one made by and sustained by intersecting systems of oppression aligning to target (both directly and indirectly) the Black population. The continued lack of access to recovery and transition programs, as well as housing, stems from public lawmakers and representatives not allocating funding and personnel to the issue. Within the greater context of a capitalist framework, homelessness should be understood as an inherent characteristic rather than a side effect of our society. There are some steps we can take in our own communities to help reduce the impacts of homelessness for our unhoused population: volunteering at shelters and resource centers, engaging in mutual aid and using our voting power to demand our representatives take action on legislation that will continue to harm our unhoused. In the meantime, we can also lean into compassion and understanding, and care for each other in every moment possible. Housing inequity is caused by the ruling class’s systems, but the solution can only come from our community.
MiC Assistant Editor Cedric Preston McCoy can be reached at cedmccoy@umich.edu.