Instead of focusing on helping unhoused Californians find a safe place to live, state and local governments routinely harass, displace, and persecute them, simply because of their housing status. The ACLU wrote in “Outside the Law: The Legal War Against Unhoused People” that our elected officials are destroying unhoused peoples’ shelter and belongings, banishing them to the desert, targeting organizations that provide them with food and water, and imposing absurd fines on them, with sometimes deadly consequences. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, are more likely to be unhoused due to the legacies of systemic racism and thus also disproportionately targeted by these harmful practices.

It’s time to make sure our laws protect unhoused Californians from harm. That’s why we are calling on state legislators to change California’s anti-discrimination law to include housing status as a protected category.

Prohibiting discrimination on the basis of housing status will:

• Help prevent discriminatory policies that target unhoused residents;

• Protect the health, wellbeing, and dignity of unhoused people who are harmed and sometimes killed by these violent forms of discrimination;

• Affirm California’s commitment to the right of all people to full and equal participation in society.

These important civil rights protections must not be advanced alone, but rather alongside significant new state investments in affordable housing and support services to ensure that California is a state where everyone can thrive.