Establishing a Climate-Conscious Bill of Rights for California's Homeless
Gabriel Greif
Abstract
California's growing unhoused population, alongside the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change, necessitates action by California's state and local governments to protect unhoused communities from the current and anticipated impacts of climate change. Despite the public discourse surrounding both climate change and homelessness in California, policy-makers have frequently treated the two as separate and unrelated issues. failing to acknowledge how catch issue interacts with the other. This failure has allowed unhoused persons' unique vulnerability to water insecurity, heat-related illness, and the spread of disease to remain divorced from policy discussions on how California must adapt to a new and harsher climate. In addition, sea level rise and wildfires will further contribute to California's housing shortage and overall unhoused population. The collective failure of California's state and local decision-makers to address this intersectionhas led to a patchwork of laws and regulations that do not adequately confront existing or future climate burdens on unhoused persons in California. This Comment recommends that the state of California pass a climate-conscious Homeless Bill of Rights, a statutory mandate on California's municipalities to adopt specific climate adaptation strategies designed to protect unhoused persons in California. The muddled and incomplete protections contemplated by current approaches suggest that a climate-conscious Homeless Bill of Rights may provide a more complete and proactive approach to ameliorating climate burdens for unhoused Californians.