California’s homeless battle floods and storms

Few are feeling the rage of California's unrelenting storms as much as the state's 170,000 homeless people.

Up and down the coast, they have endured torrential rain, flood waters, mudslides, lighting strikes, and downed trees, often with little more than tents or bridges for shelter.

"The water backed up to my tent, it's still going," said Maurice, who lives in San Francisco and who declined to provide his last name. "Ninety percent of my stuff is still wet. I'm trying to salvage the stuff I do need to keep on going."

"I can't do anything to change it," he added. "The only thing I can do is make the best of a bad situation."

The storm has placed a spotlight on the Golden State's staggering inequality, and its decades-long failure to adequately shelter and support its homeless residents.

"People are already living in very unsafe conditions. People do not have appropriate access to sanitation, to clean drinking water, to electricity. That is the baseline already," said Talya Husbands-Hankin, founder of the Oakland-area homeless aid organisation Love and Justice in the Streets.

"Large majorities of unhoused people are black - this is a racial justice issue. Many are disabled, most are medically vulnerable as a result of living outside.

"And then you add on top of that this extreme weather, and people's property is just destroyed," she said. "They're soaking wet, they're cold, and the weather does not seem to be letting up."

A community bands together

In the Wood Street Commons community in Oakland, roughly 75 residents banded together to weather-proof their makeshift homes during the storm, struggling to stay dry as they worked through downpours.

"It is horrible out here in the rain, it elevates some stuff like not being able to have heaters, not having a fire on," said John Janosko, a 54-year-old resident.

Wood Street Commons residents live in a variety of homes, from self-built structures to tents to recreational vehicles. Some of those shelters have been flooded, and residents are "slushing through mud," Mr Janosko told the BBC. Their biggest challenge, he said, was staying warm and dry, which was necessary to fight off illness and hypothermia.

"It turns into somewhat of an adventure, that's how we make it through all the chaos," Mr Janosko said.

The community, already well versed at organising its own resources and events, unclogged storm drains and dug ditches to control runoff. People from across Oakland have donated tarps, ponchos, clothing, and food during the storm, and the community takes monetary donations through a GoFundMe fundraiser.

But Mr Janosko said the city had not provided necessary aid. In fact, Wood Street Commons is engaged in a protracted battle with the city of Oakland and the California Department of Transportation, which demolished shelters and cleared an estimated 200 homeless people from the encampment in September 2022.

Deadly conditions

Across the state, homeless communities have faced deadly weather conditions.

In Southern California's Ventura County, emergency responders rescued fourteen unhoused people after a nearby river burst its banks and engulfed their camp.

In the state capitol of Sacramento, falling trees killed two people who had pitched their tents below. Rebekah Rohde, 40, and Steven Sorensen, 61, were well known in their communities, the Sacramento Bee reported, and Ms Rohde had five children who live in Minnesota.

A long-standing encampment along the American River in Sacramento experienced severe flooding and storm damage this week.

One strip of land, known as Bannon Island, was cut off from land as the river swelled. The homeless people who lived there used a makeshift raft and a pulley to navigate the waterway.

An estimated 1,000 unhoused people live in this encampment, according to Janna Haynes of the Sacramento Department of Homeless Services.

The city has scrambled to increase its shelter capacity and opened emergency facilities, Ms Haynes said. Aid workers offered transportation to shelters and visited encampments to warn residents about the extreme weather.

But many homeless people decline to enter shelters for a variety of reasons, Ms Haynes said. Some do not want to abandon family, pets or their belongings, while others have trauma from previous experiences in shelters.

"We're working with our non-profit partners to help people who chose to stay, to help them stay safe out there," she told the BBC.

Ms Husbands-Hankin, of Love and Justice in the Streets, told BBC News that the storm highlighted the need for California to drastically improve its approach to homelessness.

"We shouldn't wait until there's an emergency like this," she said. "Every day without shelter is a life and death situation."