*It’s a sight that has grown more commonplace and even more agonizing. And with good reason. In 2024 the Urban Institute conducted a study on the crisis problem of women of color on the streets in Los Angeles County. The numbers are staggering. It found that three out of four women on the sidewalks are women of color. Thirty percent of those women are Black.
Though they make up less than ten percent of the population of Los Angeles County, Black women are three times more likely to be homeless than white women. And there’s a new norm: age. A growing percentage of those Black women who wind up on L.A.’s sidewalks are under age 30.
This new disturbing norm parallels a norm that this writer addressed in a prior column. That is the very noticeable surge in Black men, many of them young, sleeping on L.A.’s sidewalks. I pointed out that it’s now a common sight to see Black men sprawled out or just plain encamped on a cold, bare sidewalk in just about any part of Los Angeles. That sight is so common in South Los Angeles that it no longer draws anything other than a passing glance — if that. But now increasingly noticeable is the sight of young Black women in that same terrifying position on sidewalks.
The reasons for the surge in the number of young Black men and now women their sidewalk residence have been repeatedly cited and are familiar: Lack of jobs, lack of education, lack of mental, drug and alcohol services, abundance of systemic racial and economic bias, and definitely an overabundance of uncompassionate caring and indifference. In the case of women, there’s the added threat of physical and sexual abuse and violence…