Wet conditions statewide present a mortal risk to the homeless people living along the state’s waterways, who are displaced with wearying regularity

Shortie Mendoza has lived along a creek in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose for six years. Early on Wednesday, he was returning to his camp from a night of dumpster-diving and errands.

“I hear yelling and I’m like, ‘my God’,” he said. During the hours of darkness, the creek had overflowed, washing out the tent he shared with his girlfriend and tearing apart the community of perhaps 40 to 50 people. His girlfriend waded out in chest-high water with her two pitbulls. “I feel like I failed because I should’ve been here earlier” to help, Mendoza said.

More than twice as much precipitation as normal has fallen in northern California since 1 October, a boon for farmers and climatologists. But wet conditions statewide present a mortal risk to the homeless people living along California’s waterways – the Los Angeles river, the Santa Ana river as it flows through Orange County, the Russian river in the redwoods north of San Francisco.

Some say they are there because they find such places vastly preferable to the prospect of a street corner, whatever the downsides during the rainy season.

“I never even knew San Jose had a creek until a friend introduced me,” said Mendoza, 31.

“For me, it was more laid-back after the Jungle,” said his friend, Phillip Quiroz, 45, referring to a vast, infamous encampment in San Jose that was cleared out several years ago. By the creek, which bisects a municipal golf course, the sounds are of water, birds and the distant clink of a club connecting with a ball. The course superintendent said his staff had even seen homeless people playing golf at night.

Five homeless people rescued from flooding as rain inundates California Read more

That doesn’t mean riverine life is idyllic. Even though the golf course is wedged between suburban neighborhoods, getting to and from the local stores and services is exhausting. “Living out here is a workout,” Mendoza said.

“It’s just a process to do anything,” Quiroz added. “Just to make dinner.”

Or to go to the bathroom. The superintendent said cleaning crews had found buckets of human waste.



More than 400 people live along the Santa Ana river in Orange County, said Paul Leon, the CEO of the Illumination Foundation, a local nonprofit. “It’s almost impossible for them to stay dry,” he said. “They’re probably not going to drown, but they’ll freeze to death or get sick and pass away from that.”

The life expectancy for homeless people is estimated at about 50, he said, and even those on the younger side struggle with pulmonary conditions such as pneumonia. Individuals living by the water, he said, are “already compromised”.

Flood conditions make everything more difficult. Rains in Los Angeles have forced homeless people out of the concrete channel of the city’s eponymous river. In the northern California town of Guerneville, homeless people are “used to maybe being displaced once or twice during a season”, said local activist Chris Brokate. But this season it has happened with wearying frequency.

They’re probably not going to drown, but they’ll freeze to death or get sick and pass away from that Paul Leon, Illumination Foundation

When the Oroville dam seemed on the verge on failing last week after heavy rains, homeless residents of the city said they felt bewildered and abandoned: the San Francisco Chronicle reported that, lacking smartphones or televisions, some heard about the danger when somebody yelled, “The dam is breaking! Get out now!”

That wasn’t necessarily the case in San Jose, where Quiroz said he had been following the weather on his phone, and Mendoza said that homeless residents had gleaned information on reservoir outflows. Even so, events unfolded too quickly for people to save their tents or belongings. Rescue crews helped them to safety.

“I’m the one who called 911. There were people yelling and screaming all over the place,” said the course superintendent, Don Paul. Seated in a golf cart, he surveyed the inundated 6th hole. “Just like me, they didn’t think it would happen.”

Homeless people stood on a bridge and looked down at their possessions snagged in trees below or half-submerged by the floodwater: tents, clothes, blankets.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Phillip Quiroz looks at the encampment flooded by Coyote Creek. Photograph: Alastair Gee/The Guardian

“Oh, my baby’s bike,” Mendoza said, spotting one that belonged to his girlfriend.

Quiroz had spoken that morning to his sister, who heard about the flood on the news. “She was crying when I talked to her. She thought I’d died or something.”

A man who lived in a home nearby, James Castro, had come by to see how the campers had fared. “They barely have anything and now they don’t even have nothing,” he said.

But despite what had happened, few said they would abandon the creek.

A woman who gave her name as Lanette walked up to her tent, which had been hastily pulled on to the bank, and sodden belongings that had been rescued from the current: a purple pair of boots, bottles of water, a dog trailer. She was exhausted.

“We have to move somewhere else, I don’t know where,” she said. She gestured to the public footpath that ran past. “There are people with kids walking right through here, I don’t want people to see us like this.”

Then she took off her shoes, climbed into her tent and slept.