Homelessness Isn’t Colorblind: Confronting Racial Inequities in Youth and Family Housing

 

By Audrey Williams

Homelessness affects thousands of people across the United States every day but not equally. Families and youth of color are far more likely to experience housing instability, yet their stories are often overlooked in conversations about homelessness. If we want to create real change, we have to face this truth: homelessness is deeply connected to racial injustice.

A powerful study by Heaton (2024) shows that families of color especially Black and Indigenous families are overrepresented in homelessness statistics, but underrepresented in the research used to create housing policy. In fact, many studies fail to include race-specific data at all. That means solutions are often one-size-fits-all and don’t address the root causes or the lived realities of families who are most impacted.

These gaps in data and understanding make it harder to create programs that actually work. One major report from HUD’s Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP) found that communities saw major improvements when young people especially youth of color were included in decision-making (HUD PD&R, 2022). When youth with lived experience were asked what they needed and allowed to help lead, services improved, partnerships strengthened, and more young people got the help they deserved.

Another important piece is community-based social work. A Core report explains that social workers who understand the environments youth live in like school, child welfare systems, and healthcare are more effective in building trust and providing support (CORE, n.d.). For families of color, that often means offering culturally relevant resources, understanding racial trauma, and advocating for equity in systems that were not built to serve them fairly.

What Can We Do?

To fight youth and family homelessness in a way that’s just and effective, we need to:

• Disaggregate data by race and ethnicity in all homelessness research and services

• Center the voices of youth of color in planning and leadership roles

• Invest in culturally aware social work that sees and supports whole communities

• Hold systems accountable for the ways they fail Black, Indigenous, and other families of color

These aren’t just policy changes they’re human ones. They’re about restoring dignity, listening deeply, and building solutions that don’t just treat symptoms, but address the full picture. Homelessness isn’t colorblind. And our solutions shouldn’t be either.

References:

CORE. (n.d.). Addressing homelessness and health inequalities through community social work. University of Birmingham. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/144156075.pdf

Heaton, A. (2024). An incomplete picture: A scoping review of how scholars account for race and ethnicity in family homelessness research. Journal of Community Psychology, 53(1), e23148. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.23148

Karas, E. (2024, July 15). As homelessness grows, its racial undertones become harder to ignore. Davis Political Review. https://www.davispoliticalreview.com/article/as-homelessness-grows-its-racial-undertones-become-harder-to-ignore

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. (2022). Evaluation of the HUD Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program: Final report. Westat. https://search.issuelab.org/resources/41919/41919.pdf