California officials are considering adopting a ‘right-to-shelter’ law that would guarantee a roof over every homeless person in the state, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. It would require cities and counties to build enough large shelters to accommodate any homeless person who asks to come indoors.
Some 90,000 of California’s 130,000 homeless people are unsheltered. The measure may be modeled after New York City’s right-to-shelter policy, which was enacted in 1981. That policy was created two years after the city was sued for turning away a man from a homeless shelter because of a lack of space.
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