California law protects its residents from discrimination based on sex, race, religion and sexual orientation.

Now a state lawmaker is pushing to add another category to the list: homelessness.

New legislation titled the "Homeless Bill of Rights" by Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco is meant to keep communities from rousting people who have nowhere to turn.

The measure is sure to be controversial in cities such as Sacramento, which has battled for years over "tent cities" for homeless people, and San Francisco, where voters passed an ordinance barring sitting or lying on sidewalks.

The heart of Assembly Bill 5 would give legal protection to people engaging in life-sustaining activities on public property. Among other activities, it specifically mentions sleeping, congregating, panhandling, urinating and "collecting and possessing goods for recyling, even if those goods contain alcoholic residue."

Ammiano declined to comment to The Bee on Thursday about the bill. His measure also would give homeless residents the right to sleep in cars that are legally parked, to receive funds through public welfare programs, to receive legal counsel when cited – even for infractions – and to possess personal property on public lands. Local officials could not force the homeless into shelters or social service programs.

If the bill passes and is signed into law, courts would be left to sort out the extent to which communities could limit the legal rights it conveys – for example, whether local ordinances could close parks during late-night hours for public safety reasons.

The bill states that homeless Californians have the right to safe, affordable housing and 24-hour access to clean water and safe restrooms, but Paul Boden, a spokesman for one of its sponsors, said the measure is not meant to require cities and counties to add new facilities.

Boden and other advocates of AB5 say that existing laws to sweep the homeless from public view are similar to Jim Crow laws of decades ago in the segregated South, and to "anti-Okie" laws of the 1930s that prohibited bringing extremely poor people into California.

The measure "would require local governments to leave people in peace who are not committing crimes," said Boden, who describes his group as a collective of West Coast social justice organizations.

Boden said homeless people routinely tell him they have been harassed for sleeping, loitering or sitting down, and the bill's supporters maintain that constitutes an attack on basic civil rights.

"Homelessness is a condition, it's not a voluntary choice," said Sacramento attorney Mark Merin, a longtime advocate for the homeless who spoke at a Capitol rally Thursday supporting the bill.

Jack Larson, 52, said he has been a homeless Sacramentan for five years and has been cited dozens of times for panhandling. He said he hopes AB5 would enable him to solicit money and sleep in public without harassment.

"They need to go catch murderers and burglars – and leave us panhandlers alone," he said.

Dianna Buettner, a Stockton high school teacher who attended Thursday's rally, added that "houseless people need to be treated like everybody else – it's not a crime to be without a house."

Assemblyman Curt Hagman, a Chino Hills Republican, said he has not seen the bill but that the state should carefully weigh whether it would violate the rights of other Californians by giving the homeless legal permission to congregate, sleep and sustain themselves on public property.