They had “nowhere to go.” Last November, when the smoke from the Camp Fire smothered the Bay Area with some of the worst air on earth, San Francisco’s homeless became even more vulnerable—as The Atlantic reported, rates of respiratory diseases such as asthma in the homeless population are double that of the general population.
Sleeping on the street is uncomfortable at any time, yet as climate change continues to confront San Francisco with extreme weather — storms, heat waves, wildfire smoke—the homeless will deal with increasingly serious health and safety risks. With the city’s homeless population rising to 10,000 people, the city needs to step up and develop climate-change policies that are designed for the realities that residents — housed and unhoused — are facing today.
“Historically, San Francisco, as a city, hasn’t been built for this type of weather. Three hundred days of the year, we have good air quality, and temperatures are pretty mild — but we are starting to see that change.”
Climate change has already made its impact on the Bay Area. The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report warning of more 100+ degree days here in the coming years. According to UC Berkeley, the area’s average temperature in July has risen by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950. Meanwhile, sea levels have risen by 2.6 inches since 1993 (that was in 2014, according to NOAA), and the waters of the bay itself have risen eight inches during the last 100 years. The rising sea levels will bring increased flooding of waterfront areas. Winter storms will intensify in some years, even as other years will see more extreme droughts.
San Francisco already offers swift and effective emergency responses to extreme weather events. During power outages, smoke events, and heat waves, the city employs pop-up shelters, cooling centers (areas where people can get water and air conditioning during a heat wave), clinics, and other short-term solutions. But what can it offer for the long term?
“A lot of our focus in the last few years has been developing plans, exercises, and protocols when it comes to climate adaptation,” Francis Zamora, director of external affairs for the City’s Department of Emergency Management (DEM), told me. “Historically, San Francisco, as a city, hasn’t been built for this type of weather,” he explained. “Three hundred days of the year, we have good air quality, and temperatures are pretty mild—but we are starting to see that change.”
However, there’s a caveat to the city’s responses: for the most part, they’re designed for housed populations, not homeless ones; surprisingly, the DEM’s plans do not provide specific actions for homeless populations. “We provide the general framework for displaced people or people without shelter during an emergency,” said Zamora. “But [for] the actual protocols, an agency — in this case, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing — develops the actions they would take to take care of their clients in an emergency.”
The city does have outreach plans for the homeless during periods of extreme heat or cold — which the DHSH defines as above 85 degrees for heat or below 45 degrees with rain for cold weather — but initial protocol calls for only between 25 and 75 additional shelter mats. The Homeless Outreach Team also conducts wellness checks and other outreach activities at the city’s Navigation Centers.
During extreme weather events, the DHSH serves primarily as a liaison, sending out emails to nonprofit partners throughout the city with warnings to keep clients inside as much as possible. “We put our best efforts forward to make sure that we are communicating with our service providers—ultimately, they are the ones on the ground,” said Tanya Ellis, DHSH’s communications lead. “We want to make sure that we are communicating with our partners to make sure they can expand our reach.”
For already cash-strapped homeless programs, that can be difficult to achieve. “The current pop-up shelters that occur when there is extreme weather aren’t able to accommodate everyone,” explained Sam Lew, policy director at the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness. “For example, for someone who is living in an encampment, if they say, ‘Hey, we have a cooling center in this other neighborhood, but you can’t bring any of your belongings, so you are going to have to leave your tent, your dog, everything behind,’ no one who is living in an encampment is going to choose to go there.”
The possessions of the homeless are often treated as disposable, subject to confiscation from the police. What’s worse is that police officers have been known to take away homeless people’s tents and other belongings during extreme weather events.
“Homeless people’s belongings should not be confiscated and destroyed by the San Francisco police department, particularly during these times,” said Lew. He pointed out that “[officers] were taking away tents during rainstorms, when shelters were at 1,000 people long on the wait list. That shouldn’t happen at all, but there especially needs to be a moratorium on that during periods of severe weather.”
To protect the homeless during extreme weather events, the city should first design policies that include them and act with compassion. The city also needs to work on a larger housing overhaul so that there are fewer people on the streets in the first place. Ideally, that would include long-term housing that unhoused people can make their homes, but even short-term shelters would be a good start.
“There should be emergency shelter available for every single person that needs it,” said Lew. “These are short-term solutions, right? Very short term. But they need to happen immediately.”
“We need to think about access to housing that is both affordable and can withstand a major disaster. That’s why the City is focused on protecting housing for all San Franciscans now — to help us be stronger and more prepared for the uncertainties of the future.”
In a report by Resilient San Francisco, a guidance document developed by the city along with nonprofit and private-sector partners to improve infrastructure and prepare for future climate and emergency challenges, the city committed to creating housing for 8,000 unhoused residents by 2020. It’s a worthy goal that San Francisco will likely not meet at its current pace of shelter expansion.
“We need to think about access to housing that is both affordable and can withstand a major disaster,” the report states. “That’s why the city is focused on protecting housing for all San Franciscans now — to help us be stronger and more prepared for the uncertainties of the future.”
In addition, mayor London Breed has expanded funding for homelessness prevention, and Ellis is hopeful that the city is moving toward housing for all. “We are super-excited about the additional funding that the mayor has provided to expand the number of beds. That is happening, and we are very excited. We look forward to getting to a place where we have expanded the system to the point that you don’t necessarily need a pop-up, because you already have the number of beds that you need.”
However, despite Mayor Breed’s commitment to providing 1,000 new shelter beds during her first term as mayor, only 300 new beds have been built since her inauguration, with another 300 due to be finished by the end of the year, according to the policy group SPUR. Solutions for the city’s deeply entrenched homeless issue remain elusive—only look at the battle fought over the Embarcadero Navigation Center.
San Francisco has the opportunity to be at the forefront in showing other city governments how to protect the homeless during natural disasters and from other impacts of climate change. With the city in the lead, the Bay Area should commit to developing both short- and long-term homelessness policies that take into account the impacts of climate change and extreme weather on the unhoused. Homelessness and climate change is a crisis in plain view, and it will only get worse—if we don’t act now.
