California is facing two wicked problems: climate change and homelessness. The state is experiencing many detrimental effects of climate change, including poor air quality, flooding, heat waves, and increasingly destructive wildfires. Concurrently, the state has seen an increase in the number of unhoused individuals due to skyrocketing housing values, failed political leadership, limited health and social services, growing income inequality, and restrictive housing policies. While unhoused populations struggle to access basic services, they must also face the impacts of climate change as they live and often sleep outside. As California’s cities and counties begin to address climate change by developing climate action plans, it is important to assess how, and to what extent, these plans consider the unhoused, who are arguably California’s most climate-vulnerable community. This study analyzes 15 climate action plans and 14 semi-structured interviews with government officials representing 11 jurisdictions across Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. This research reveals that unhoused communities have been largely left out of climate decision-making processes and offers recommendations for municipalities to include people who live and sleep outside in climate action plans, so they are part of the solution to build more just and resilient communities.
Guadalupe M. Franco (Mon,) studied this question.