I'm curious where you see the levers of individual agency here, and to what degree you think the affected people have tried to pull them. What's _your_ underlying thesis?
That is beyond my proverbial pay grade. But it's not beyond my proverbial pay grade to state that believing that, systemically, “[x demographic in y location] are way more likely to be [in undesirable situation]” is completely denying agency to the individuals in question by pretending that [x demographic in y location] ending up [in undesirable situation] is something of a weighted dice roll made by unseen forces, completely outside of individual agentic influence.
Either you're willfully ignoring the American citizen's right to free movement between States, or you're actually saying that any given black person who moves to Oakland has—regardless of any life circumstances or decisions they've made, simply as a fact of their ethnicity—some arbitrary-percentage chance of ending up homeless, as some immutable localized nth-order structural outcome, regardless of any choices they make.
Oh, I see the confusion - in America, we use the word “free” to mean both “allowed to” and “doesn’t cost money,” which leads to the kinds of odd circumstances where one is “free” to do something, but that thing isn’t “free,” so if they lack the money or resources to do so, they’re not actually able to do it. It’s a confusing part of our language and our system.
Similarly, we’ve got a bunch of cases where the law says X, but actually conforming with the law, or proving what you’re doing is legal, also costs money, and is therefore not “free” either. That one catches a bunch of people.
Does anyone else here know what this guy is talking about? I think he completely misread my post. I was asking if a black American citizen moving to Oakland had some arbitrary percent chance of becoming homeless after living there for awhile, based on his ethnicity and whatever structural factors Oakland has going for it alone (as implied by the rhetoric elsewhere in the thread). He then turned it into some kind of tirade about the ambiguity of the English language, or something, rather than answering my question?
They're calling you out on asking why the homeless don't just move, ignoring that (a) even the homeless have roots and social networks in the areas they live in, (b) long-distance travel is not trivial for those without financial means, (c) they may not have a reason to move away (what good is it to still be homeless in another town that you don't know?) and possibly other points.
Clearly, there are systemic reasons for certain ethnicities to be at higher risk of becoming homeless (not just in the U.S.). There are also clear reasons why people who share an ethnicity like living near each other, regardless of financial means. I think you're looking for a causation between two phenomena that may be entirely independent from each other.
Edit: I think this may have started with a misinterpretation of the initial post here (which was by a user who hasn't replied any further). You may have interpreted it as "in the Bay area, PoC are more likely to be homeless" while the original wording also allows for the interpretation of "PoC are more likely to be homeless, which e.g. is noticeable in the Bay area" that doesn't imply causation and is how I read the comment.
If people are systematically more likely to be in area X, that may be because they are systematically more likely to make the relevant choices - for example because they are under different constraints or have different preferences. Choice is part of social science.