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Comment by edblarney | Hacker News Reader

"The poorest people are rural whites and southern/inner city African Americans. "

I don't agree.

There are very large numbers of Central/South Americans who come to Cali, largely unskilled, and they occupy the biggest part of the economic underclass.

Think of how many are not even 'on the books'? I'd argue it's very difficult for an undocumented person to make that much.

It's not a 'moral' statement, it's just a reality of the blending of people from different civilizations in one pot.

Large scale migration from poor countries will definitely be a factor.

And as one commenter above noted - the 'weather' does as well.

Nice weather attracts more vagabonds. This is true in Canada s well, BC has way more street people than Ontario where it's extremely cold and extremely uncomfortable for street people in the winter. Again, not a moral statement. Just fairly rational human nature.

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19% of SF's homeless are Hispanic, versus 15% of the general population.

36% of SF's homeless are African American, versus 7% of the general population.

The data doesn't back you up. The very poorest unable to even find housing are statistically more likely to be African American than Hispanic.

[1]:http://sfmayor.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/...

SF is not California.

Moreover, it's not even the 'Bay Area' - it's a tiny, unrepresentative spot of 700 000 people.

Also - 'homelessness' is not the same thing as 'under the poverty line'.

California is 33% latino, and less than 7% African American.

African Americans might be more likely to be 'in poverty', sadly, but there are nearly 5x more Latino Americans than African Americans in California.

This does not even include a large population undocumented people, who are far more likely to be Latino than Black.

Here is the data:

https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-17.pdf

In the US, Latino Americans are just slightly less likely to be 'in poverty' than African Americans. In California, with a 5x more population, that would very roughly boil down to 5x more Latino Americans in poverty than African Americans.

Hence my point.

From NYC: "African-American and Latino New Yorkers are disproportionately affected by homelessness. Approximately 58 percent of New York City homeless shelter residents are African-American, 31 percent are Latino, 7 percent are white, less than 1 percent are Asian-American, and 3 percent are of unknown race/ethnicity."

You also need to be very careful with context and analysis of "latino". Statistically, Latino is an overlay term representing cultural origin. Many African Americans identify as Latino.

Again, NYC is not America.

Again, we're talking about poverty rates, not homeless rates.

Yes, I understand 'Latino' is not always central/south American in the classic sense, but fyi - Latino's are far more likely to be classified as 'White' than 'African American' - i.e. Spanish, Cubans etc.

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