As extreme weather events (EWEs) become more frequent and intense under the climate emergency, some urbanites have the resources and opportunities to limit their exposure, whilst more vulnerable and marginalised groups do not. For rough sleepers - who often have little or no choice but to be outside during storms, cold snaps, or heatwaves – exposure can quickly become over-exposure, as social structures intersect to create specific street-level hazards. They say you can’t control the weather, yet the uneven impact of the elements is being shaped by multiple contingent factors.
In 2022, more rough sleepers died during the summer months than the winter months in London, as a record-breaking heatwave combined with unsuitable policies and a lack of understanding into how (avoidable) over-exposures are being replicated. Severe Weather Emergency Protocols (SWEPs) – which provide emergency shelter and support - are woefully under-evidenced, inconsistent across different local authorities, and widely criticised by vulnerable communities and grassroots organisations alike, who point to limitations such as arbitrary data benchmarks (e.g. automatically kicking in at 0C). Meanwhile, Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs) and Community Protection Notices (CPNs) mobilise property/trespass logics to move people along from threshold spaces by threatening them with criminalisation.
We need to explore the entanglements of inequalities to understand something like ‘homelessness’ in its complexity. Drawing from multiple research projects, this paper will offer a background before beginning to flesh-out and explore ‘over-exposure’ as a way to describe these vicious feedback loops. This concept aims to move in the direction of establishing a novel and disruptive framework for understanding the interplay between climate urbanism and socio-spatial justice.