Why Are Most Homeless People White?

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Ever noticed that almost anywhere you go in the U.S, homeless people are mostly Caucasian?

Think back to the person begging for your change this morning. That was a white guy, wasn't it? The silver-bearded veteran hitting you up for Washingtons in front of the local liquor store: Yep, a white guy.

And you're not alone in witnessing this. Nor is it a local anomaly. Research suggests that Whites outnumber every other racial group in America.

And that trend continues to this day.

More specifically, a study in 2019 (✓2) found that in the U.S.:

• 44,872 more Whites than African Americans were homeless.
• 233,739 more Whites than people of mixed races were homeless.
• 252,641 more Whites than Native Americans were homeless.
• 261,296 more Whites than Pacific Islanders were homeless.
• And 263,379 more Whites than Asians were homeless in the United States in the same year.

But why?

Why are most homeless people white?

Of course, in the U.S., it wouldn't be surprising if the racial group that had the most homeless individuals belonged to a racial minority group. For as far back as the records go, minorities hold the short end of the stick. They have always been more poor, and more discriminated against for housing and economic opportunities in the country (✓3).

Given the disadvantages that minorities face, it wouldn't be unreasonable to suspect that a racial group other than Whites would hold the greatest number of homeless people.

But that is not the reality.

More Whites than any other racial group in America are homeless.

Why?

The reason is unsurprising. But the answer, unless it just so happens to occur when thinking about it, can be illusive:

WHITES COMPRISE THE MAJORITY OF THE UNITED STATES POPULATION

Once you realize that, the reality of more Whites being homeless than African Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Asians, or people of mixed races makes sense.

We should expect that most homeless people are white in the U.S. because most people in the country are white.

But it's the other racial groups in America that are perhaps more interesting in the issue of homelessness.

Whites, as far as rates of homelessness are concerned, suffer lower rates of homelessness than racial minority populations. Racial minority groups over-represent the homeless population as a whole.

If you look at the percentage of any given racial minority group within the entire United States population, any racial group other than Whites, say Asians for this example,  you find that the percentage of Asians who make up the homeless population is greater than the percentage of Asians who comprise the overall U.S. population.

The same holds for every other racial minority group in the U.S. as well (✓4).

This reveals that, even though most homeless people are white, races other than Caucasians truly do get the short end of the stick. They get the short end of the stick at least in terms of housing in America.

So we really were correct in suspecting in the introduction that, like most social phenomenons, racial minorities, because they are more discriminated against for housing and economic opportunities, suffer more homelessness (✓4).

But instead of more homeless people by overall numbers in the population, racial minorities as compared to Whites suffer higher rates of homelessness in the U.S.

So the reason why most homeless people are white in the U.S. is that they comprise the majority of the U.S. population.

SUMMARY

The unsurprising reason why most homeless people are white in the U.S. is most Americans are white. Unless this thought occured to us initially, we were probably scratching our heads.

Further confirming what we'd expect, racial minority groups are over-represented in the United States homeless population. The reason, at least in part, is racial discrimination. Racial minority groups are still more often discriminated against than Whites for opportunities like housing and employment.