A study suggests that homeless populations in some parts of the Bay Area face a severe threat from flooding due to rainstorms.
The University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources researchers behind the study found that over the past 30 years, rainstorms in the Bay Area have grown wetter and more frequent. These storms can cause flooding in low-lying areas, posing a severe risk to vulnerable populations such as homeless individuals living near rivers and creeks.
The study was published in the International Journal of Climatology.
The study authors mapped the social vulnerability of each U.S. Census tract in the Bay Area based on criteria like poverty, housing burden, minority populations, and access to transportation.
Then, they overlay these vulnerability maps upon the maps of storm frequency in the Bay Area.
Igor Lacan, one of the study’s authors, said in a news release that “social vulnerability, such as sensitivity to hazards based on low income and resources, overlaps with higher storm frequency.”
“These areas are patchily distributed across the Bay Area counties and include both urban stream locations, such as in San Jose and Hayward, and more ex-urban streams, as you see in Antioch and Vallejo,” Lacan said.
Some high-risk areas like Concord, Santa Rosa, and Vallejo are inland, and while coastal areas like Oakland and Richmond experience fewer storms, they are home to more vulnerable populations.
Gregory Pasternack, another of the study’s authors, hopes that their study can inform local governments’ policies to protect residents from flooding.
“While some people are working hard to find homes for folks in encampments, meanwhile, the number of people losing their housing is still growing, so the problem is trending worse,” Pasternack said in the news release. “Therefore, we need to take steps to provide support for people where they are, even as we work to move them into better solutions for the long term.”
Most don’t want to be “helped” …. and how much will this study cost us & whose brother-in-law is getting paid for this?
It’s much easier for law-makers to give our money to pay for studies when they tie the funds to the desired outcome. Paid studies designated to find problems, always manage to find a problem.
What it ain’t ~ is rocket science.
~~~ e=something-or-other-two, or something.
They should pay them to find out why 70% of our kids can’t read or do math at grade level.
Why teachers actually teach that using proper grammar is “just too formal” for everyday usage.
Those who can, do. Those who can’t…..
90% of these homeless do not want to be helped. They just want to live a free irresponsible life and enjoy their drugs. Trust me, I know. I’ve been working 10 years to help and now I realize what’s really going on. At this point I don’t care if the next storm washes them and all their garbage out to sea!
Next time you see a homeless person- realize how they are majority able-bodied men in their 20s and 30s who are able to be productive citizens. They could dig ditches..they could do janitorisl work! And I have another Revelation for you folks: most of them have family close by with houses! Some are actually quite well off. I’ve asked numerous ones why they weren’t still at home and they said because their mother nagged them or something like that.
I think if we finally get tough with them rather than treating them like their little Fallen Angels the problem will solve itself 90%
Where did you get the stats for that? What I’ve read it is only about 20% that have psychological problems. The problem is that modern medicine gives them psychotropic drugs “to keep them under control” rather than to treat them. Those drugs make them feel “brain dead”. Maybe you would feel different about the problem if you had a dose of this “treatment”.
.
Needless to say the real culprit is our screwed up economic system which serves the banksters and not the people. Easy for people to find themselves out of a job and homeless without really doing anything to get there. Depression follows.
Oh so it’s a Mental Health issue? Keep fooling yourself! It’s a Government not taking responcibility issue. Give the Billions to NGO’s so Government has “Plausable Deniability” and point at the NGO’s when things go bad and the Money is misspent. That’s what is going on, and the Politically aligned NGO’s are getting FAT! at the taxpayers expense!
I don’t see any bums hanging out at Home Depot looking for work…
I was just there on my lunch 2 hours ago you must be blind because the parking lot is littered with them!
Oh so it’s a Mental Health issue? Keep fooling yourself! It’s a Government not taking responcibility issue. Give the Billions to NGO’s so Government has “Plausable Deniability” and point at the NGO’s when things go bad and the Money is misspent. That’s what is going on, and the Politically aligned NGO’s are getting FAT! at the taxpayers expense!
Does anyone on this site actually care?… Answer honestly.
Yes, we do. And it actually costs less than 2 widow mites to realize.
Nope
Nope not one bit, sick of this. Our City, County and state leaders have all enabled this for years and it was accelerated during Covid. There is no excuse for this at all we pay taxes through the nose and this is the result each and every time. Gavy promised his 12 step program that he implemented in SF to solve homelessness was going to save the day but for who exactly? We actually have an administration doing something about it right now and Gavy’s answer is the same we’ve heard since 2016 which is old and tired like a stale fart in the wind!
Rousting every time there’s a complaint,
hows that workin’ out. Provide basic dignity services clean water, showers,
garbage and mental health and addiction services. Or continue to clean
out camp sites which will cost government more in long run.
.
Beserkly had dumpster placed near homeless encampment, was removed
June 2025.
.
2026
‘Rare tropical disease that can kill humans and dogs is spreading
through Bay Area homeless encampments’
.
“Attorney Anthony Prince, who is representing the homeless union, believes the city is using the bacterial outbreak as an excuse to evict residents, per the outlet.
He added that the filthy conditions worsened after officials removed a dumpster from the encampment.”
https://tinyurl.com/mw7zww27
.
San Diego 2016 baseball All Star Game, those in power did not
want to be embarrassed by homeless living on the streets.
https://tinyurl.com/bdeudv8h
.
2017
‘An outbreak waiting to happen: Hepatitis A marches through
San Diego’s homeless community’…
“The San Diego City Council is seeking solutions to a hepatitis A
outbreak that has killed 16 people and infected more than 400,
and is exacerbated the city’s growing population of homeless
people, which increases during the winter.”
https://tinyurl.com/3c33hr7f
.
“the city was locking and removing bathrooms to help control the
rampant drug and prostitution trade they’d spawned. Hepatitis A
is transmitted through contact with feces from an infected person,
and in close, unsanitary conditions, the highly contagious virus
can spread explosively. So it was only a matter of time, experts
say, before cases would surge among the homeless.”
https://tinyurl.com/dzf75d89
.
San Diego’s Hepatitis A outbreak was self inflicted, thru execution
of a shallow thinker’s KNEE JERK idea. Outbreak spread to bay area.
.
Rather than continually rousting, provide an enticing area with services
for basic human needs. Homeless will gravitate to those areas.
In long run will cost government much less than repeatedly using
punitive tactics.
.
San diego and bezerkly prove what President Reagan said,
“The best minds are not in government. If any were,
business would steal them away.”
Our tax dollars at work, impressive. Sigh. Glad they determined if a big rain comes the creeks will swell and people living on the banks will be in danger.
Flooding sometimes also threatens the segment of the state population that the democrat politicians couldn’t care less about: Honest hard working responsible tax paying home owning citizens.
Still waiting for the study on how the homeless population poses a threat to the environment and waterways with all their trash and waste!
What a novel thing to study, something that is well known! Several years ago after a big storm washed the “Homeless” out of the Creek they were all over Contra Costa Blvd,, in Pleasant Hill. One even set up a camp fire next to Big Five and scorched the outside of the building! This discovery between floods and Homeless reminds me of the statement :”The burden of poverty rests heavily upon the Poor”….Gov. Edmund G. Brown the 1st.
I wonder why the study does not show that by codling them they are enabling them.
Time to play hardball with these dirty drug addicts, if you want to be homeless you are going to have to keep your area clean or else we are going to bulldoze your crap into a deep hole then burn and bury it, no more free hand outs…PERIOD!!!
I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, I refuse to give these lazy dirtbags handouts, and I am tired of my hard earned money going to support their laziness, and addictions.
Be productive or either starve or freeze to death, or die of overdose, or disease, these are your choices. Now it’s up too you, time to grow up and decide your fate, your actions or lack there of, have consequences, it’s time to suck it up and face the facts, no more freeloading!!!