California has a right to water. So why do Sacramento’s homeless lack access to water?

Sacramento’s temperatures soared to a record-breaking 116 degrees on Tuesday. The heat wave is especially dangerous to our unhoused neighbors who lack reliable access to water.

California recognizes a “Human Right to Water.” Assembly Bill 685, passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2012, declares that every person in California “has the right to safe, clean, affordable and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking and sanitary purposes.”

We must take targeted and effective action now to realize California’s Human Right to Water so that everyone — including our most vulnerable unhoused people — can survive future heat waves.

Over 160,000 people were unhoused in California as of the latest federal census, with nearly 10,000 people experiencing homelessness in Sacramento County. Over 70% are outside due to a lack of shelter and affordable housing. All of them lack regular access to clean water for drinking and bathing as well as toilets.

While the only permanent solution to this humanitarian crisis is affordable and accessible housing, we urgently need ensure in the interim that California’s human right to water is not a hollow platitude for people experiencing homelessness.

There are commonsense ways to ensure that our unhoused neighbors have access to drinking water, showers and toilets. Public toilets and water fountains are a good first step, but unfortunately, many of Sacramento’s public water fountains are nonoperational.

Furthermore, the vast majority of Sacramento’s parks lack public toilets, according to the Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness’ 2018 report “Dignity Denied.” Of those that do exist, many are locked when they are supposed to be open, and none are available overnight.

Experiences in Los Angeles, Oakland and San Diego have shown that keeping enough bathrooms open 24 hours and staffed by attendants is an effective and safe strategy to help people experiencing homelessness. Mobile shower programs, like Lava Mae in San Francisco and Oakland, are also helpful.

Emergency measures to deliver bottles of drinking water to encampments, including a small effort by Sacramento County, can help prevent more tragic deaths.

One of the most important means of addressing this crisis is to provide funding to make the human right to water a reality for California’s unhoused people.

Senate Bill 200, enacted in 2019, established the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund to help meet the goals set by the right-to-water legislation. The legislation allocated $130 million per year through 2030 to protect the human right to water.

However, while the State Water Resources Control Board’s Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience (SAFER) program addressed the water needs of homeless populations in 2021, they were completely overlooked in the current year. To realize the right to water for all Californians, cities and nonprofit organizations that serve people experiencing homelessness must be able to apply for SAFER funds to meet the population’s water and sanitation needs. These funds could go toward building public toilets and hiring attendants to keep them clean and safe; building and maintaining public water fountains; hiring mobile shower providers; and making water deliveries to encampments.

Finally, while the State Water Board has statutory authority over California’s right to water, there is no one on its staff tasked with figuring out how to make water and sanitation accessible to people experiencing homelessness. State agencies such as the board and the Delta Stewardship Council can prioritize the right to water by allocating staff to determine how to provide adequate water for drinking, cooking, bathing and sanitation for tens of thousands of Californians who don’t have homes to live in.

A right is not a right unless it’s guaranteed. Without a real right to water, more of our unhoused neighbors will suffer due to the state’s failure to supply what most of us take for granted.

An early version of this column inaccurately speculated that an unhoused person had died of heat stroke on the American River Parkway.

This story was originally published September 9, 2022 at 5:00 AM.