A year after flood disaster, is San Diego’s stormwater system better equipped? – San Diego Union-Tribune
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| San Diego City Stormwater Infrastructure |
San Diego's Stormwater System Still Vulnerable Year After Historic Floods
The City of San Diego cleared 18 miles of stormwater channels in response to last January's devastating floods - the most maintenance completed in recent history - but significant infrastructure problems persist, leaving the city at continued flood risk.Despite the maintenance blitz that removed 66,000 tons of vegetation and debris, over 30 flood channel segments remain unmaintained for at least 14 years. The stormwater department faces $1.6 billion in unfunded infrastructure needs over the next four years, with 86% of levee deficiencies unaddressed and 29% of channels unable to properly carry stormwater.
The city initiated more than 20 emergency infrastructure projects totaling $73 million after the floods. However, most planned upgrades remain in early stages and won't be completed for years. Key problems include:
- Aging pump stations, with many over 50 years old
- 20 miles of outdated corrugated metal drainage pipes still in use
- Thousands of unresolved stormwater complaints from residents
- Limited funding, with current fees covering less than 10% of operating costs
While city officials highlight their emergency response and federal aid secured after the floods, critics argue more preventive maintenance and infrastructure investment is needed, especially in historically underserved neighborhoods. A proposed parcel tax to fund improvements failed to make November's ballot amid concerns over passage.
The stormwater department continues seeking grants and loans to address the backlog but acknowledges the significant gap between available funding and infrastructure needs.
Last January’s destructive floods highlighted the many problems that need fixing within San Diego’s flood prevention system, problems that the city’s stormwater department and residents alike have warned about for years.
But a year later, even after the hardest-hit flood channels were cleared, many of those infrastructure problems persist and continue to leave San Diego vulnerable to flooding risk, department officials say.
The city’s stormwater facilities are still underfunded and outdated, and not all of them are being maintained.
While the stormwater department cleared 18 miles of stormwater channels last year in the flooding aftermath — the most it has cleared in one year in recent history — dozens of channel segments across the city still have not been maintained in at least 14 years, recent city records show.
And the city is still behind on fixing or updating several known deficiencies in other stormwater facilities, such as its levees and drain pipes.
Following through with more of the needed repairs and upgrades will prove difficult.
The stormwater department doesn’t get nearly as much funding as it needs to properly update and maintain its facilities. Its unfunded infrastructure needs total more than $1.6 billion for the next four years. Meanwhile, city leaders declined to try for a parcel tax measure in November’s election that, if passed, could have provided a sorely needed funding boost for the city’s stormwater system.
At the same time, San Diego is confronting a structural budget deficit of more than $250 million for each of the next five years, Mayor Todd Gloria said during his State of the City address earlier this month. He did not mention the flood in the speech.
San Diego officials say they have responded efficiently and effectively to the disaster, noting the 200-plus water rescues made on the day of the flood.
The city quickly secured a disaster declaration, paving the way for federal relief. Officials also helped sign up thousands of victims for federal aid, opened two relief centers and waived permit fees to help applicants rebuild.
“A year ago, parts of San Diego were hit by an extraordinarily rare storm that devastated some of our communities, and many San Diegans are still living with its impacts every day,” Gloria said in a statement.
“I am extremely proud of our first responders who saved lives that day,” he said.
But the city also succeeded in limiting its legal responsibility for flood damage suffered by business owners who applied for emergency response grants. The grant applications include language that releases San Diego from future legal damages.
“The city of San Diego shall not be liable hereunder for any type of damages, whether direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, exemplary, reliance, punitive or special damages,” the grant application stated in part.
It was not immediately clear how many San Diego small-business owners agreed to the terms.
Meanwhile, the city is confronting dozens of lawsuits from more than 1,500 flood victims, the City Attorney’s Office told the City Council earlier this month.
The cost of defending the flood-related litigation is likely to reach into the millions. Two weeks ago, the City Council agreed to spend some $6 million on outside law firms to fight complex litigation, including the lawsuits filed by flood victims.
Even worse, internal records show San Diego is badly underinsured, and may not have the cash it needs to resolve the slew of litigation.
City records show San Diego had seven insurance policies in effect for the year ending June 30, 2024, capped at a combined $50 million. In legal complaints filed to date, plaintiffs’ lawyers have claimed damages of up to 10 times that amount.
‘Before you cause another flood’
The city says it cleared more than 66,000 tons of vegetation and sediment from its flood channels and other stormwater facilities last fiscal year. The stormwater department says it will continue to maintain the channels that were cleared last year following the flooding to ensure vegetation doesn’t grow back in them this year.
The flooding emergency cost the stormwater department $8.8 million for staff overtime and other expenses for channel clearing, city spokesperson Ramon Galindo said in an email. It also prompted more than 20 emergency stormwater infrastructure improvement projects totaling $73 million.
Even after that maintenance blitz, however, significant infrastructure deficiencies remain and are exacerbating flood risk, stormwater officials say.
More than 30 flood channel segments across the city still have not been maintained or cleared in at least 14 years, according to city documents — including channels in Point Loma, Mid-City, Balboa Park, Chollas View and San Ysidro.
Aside from flood channels, other parts of the city’s stormwater system are also in disrepair, per the stormwater department’s own performance metrics for the last fiscal year.
More than 86% of deficiencies in the city’s levees, such as excessive vegetation growth and burrow holes, have not been addressed. About 29% of flood channels are unable to carry stormwater as intended. And 15% of storm drain inlets were not inspected.
The city replaced less than a mile of drains made of corrugated metal pipe, considered an outdated and inferior material — the stormwater department says at least 5 miles should have been replaced that year. There are about 20 miles of corrugated metal pipe still in use in the city.
“Many of these (corrugated metal pipe) drains are beyond their useful life and need replacement,” Galindo said.
There were several days during the wet season early last year when stormwater pump stations were not fully functional. Many of the city’s 15 pump stations are more than 50 years old and need significant upgrades, Galindo said; the city has plans to upgrade two pump stations in Pacific Beach and Old Town using federal loan funding.
Residents have noticed the failures.
According to the city’s Get It Done online portal where people can report infrastructure problems, residents have filed more than 3,200 stormwater-related complaints since the day of the floods. More than a quarter of those have yet to be marked by the city as resolved.
Many of the reports cite storm drains or flood channels that are clogged with trash, debris or vegetation.
“The city of San Diego came out last week and cut down trees and brush but left it all in the channel behind the houses,” says one complaint filed last week by a resident of Valencia Park, just east of the Southcrest neighborhood that was badly damaged a year ago.
“This is an area that was flooded last year due to clogged drains,” the report said. “The city will need to clear the debris they left in the channel before you cause another flood.”
The Get It Done app lists the complaint response as “in process.”
A similar problem was reported earlier last week along Minerva Drive, upstream from the section of Chollas Creek that flooded last year.
“Current dried brush is a fire hazard, blocked storm brow ditch drainage,” the report states. “Reported eight months ago, case closed when still unresolved today!!!!!”
The response to that complaint also is listed as “in process.”
The city has many capital projects in the works to update its stormwater infrastructure, including four dozen projects to replace corrugated metal pipes, a dozen green infrastructure projects and the pump station upgrades.
But most of the projects are still in the planning or design phase and won’t be completed for years.
Tackling a $1.6 billion backlog
Year after year, San Diego’s stormwater department gets far short of the funding it needs to maintain or upgrade its facilities properly.
The department anticipates it will have $132.1 million in unfunded maintenance and operation costs for the next fiscal year, which include costs to clear flood channels.
In addition, early last year the city pegged its unfunded infrastructure capital project needs for the following five years at more than $1.6 billion — a figure the city calculates every year, and that has climbed every year since 2016. The latest five-year estimate is expected to be released early next month.
The stormwater department “has consistently shared the significant funding needs in public reports to the City Council over the past several years,” Galindo said.
The problem of stormwater systems needing more funding isn’t unique to San Diego, he notes. It is a common theme across the country, where stormwater often must compete with other priorities in cities’ general funds for revenue.
San Diego collects a stormwater fee of 95 cents per single-family home and, for multifamily and commercial properties, less than 7 cents per 100 cubic feet of water used. But the fee, which hasn’t been raised since its inception in 1996, is so low that in recent years it hasn’t covered even 10 percent of the stormwater department’s operating budget.
After last January’s floods, city leaders discussed potentially putting a parcel tax to voters that would have raised $129 million a year for stormwater infrastructure. That tax would have paid only for capital projects, rather than regular maintenance such as channel clearing — but it would have helped the stormwater department begin to address its $1.6 billion backlog of unfunded infrastructure needs.
But city leaders declined to put a stormwater tax on the ballot amid concerns it wouldn’t pass. In California, special taxes like that one are particularly difficult to pass because they must win a two-thirds majority from voters, rather than the simple majority that general use taxes require.
Critics had also complained that the proposed tax was set too high, and at a rate higher than Los Angeles residents pay for a similar stormwater tax. The San Diego stormwater tax would have raised the median cost for a single-family household by $18.67 a month.
City leaders opted instead to go only for a general citywide one-cent sales tax increase to provide revenue for the entire city budget. That tax measure still failed at the polls.
Without sufficient local funding, the stormwater department has resorted to seeking public loans and grants to fund fractions of its true needs.
The department’s biggest pot of funding for capital projects comes from a $733 million federal loan, for which the city has to match funds.
More recently, the city secured a $37 million state loan for storm drain upgrades and green infrastructure in South Mission Beach.
The city is waiting to hear back on its applications for another state loan that would pay for restoring Los Peñasquitos Lagoon, as well as two federal grants that would upgrade stormwater infrastructure in the Chollas Creek Watershed and two federal grants that would make improvements for its Jamacha Drainage Channel and Auburn Creek.
“The City has been aggressively pursuing stormwater funding through all available sources,” Galindo wrote in an email.
Originally Published:
One Year Since Record-Breaking Storm, City of San Diego Encourages Flood Preparedness and Prevention
timesofsandiego.com
One year ago, on Jan. 22, a historic rainstorm hit the San Diego region, bringing 2.73 inches of rain in a 24-hour period, making it the highest level of precipitation since 1850.
The storm caused significant flooding in several neighborhoods of the city along Chollas Creek and in other jurisdictions, causing devastating damage to homes and businesses.
During the storm, San Diego Fire-Rescue and San Diego Police Department teams responded to rescue multiple people who were trapped in their homes or vehicles due to the flooding. More than 200 water rescues were performed.
“A year ago, parts of San Diego were hit by an extraordinarily rare storm that devastated some of our communities, and many San Diegans are still living with its impacts every day,” Mayor Todd Gloria said. “I am extremely proud of our first responders who saved lives that day, as well as all the city employees and nonprofit partners who worked tirelessly in the storm’s aftermath to help residents rebuild their lives. With climate change creating ever more intense weather events, the City is working with the people of San Diego to be ready as possible for anything Mother Nature sends our way.”
Gloria declared a State of Emergency in the city of San Diego and worked with federal officials, including then-Vice President Kamala Harris, to secure a Federal Disaster Declaration, which allowed San Diegans to receive Federal Emergency Management Agency funding and resources.
According to data provided by FEMA, 4,856 structures across the county sustained damage from the storm, that includes those in the city of San Diego, National City, Spring Valley and other areas. FEMA provided approximately $27 million dollars to residents for damage to their homes and businesses, for rental assistance and for housing.
As residents have worked to repair their properties and rebuild, the city has offered support through several programs to assist them.
- In collaboration with the County of San Diego, the Emergency Temporary Lodging Program was established to provide safe housing options for people whose homes were damaged.
- More than 400 families have received financial support for housing through the San Diego Housing Commission’s Flood Recovery Program.
- With assistance available through the Virtual Local Assistance Center, and in person at the Mountain View/Beckwourth Library, those impacted by the storm were able to access to resources.
- By waiving permit fees for construction, the city has helped residents save approximately $80,000 on rebuilding. So far, 87 permits have been processed with guidance from the Development Services Department.
- Under the Debris Assistance Program and household debris removal, more than 6,870 tons of storm-related trash, debris and hazardous waste were collected and removed. The City also replaced and delivered 1,650 trash and recycling containers for free.
- A total of 106 small businesses and nonprofits were approved to receive $365,000 in funding through the Business Emergency Response & Resilience Grant.
Under the State of Emergency, following the storm, crews were able to perform emergency maintenance for 18 miles of stormwater channels citywide — roughly 10 years’ worth of productivity — including 12 miles in the Chollas Creek watershed.
In 2024, Gloria and the city of San Diego co-sponsored Assembly Bill 3227, the Streamlining Storm Water Channel Maintenance Act, authored by Assemblymember David Alvarez (D-San Diego). As a result of AB 3227, the city has been able to expedite maintenance on the two key stormwater channels in the impacted areas: the Alpha channel and the Ocean View channel.
The city also sponsored Assembly Bill 2501, another bill authored by Assemblymember Alvarez, which allows for improved staffing levels at local water boards to enable more efficient review of permits.
Additionally, the Stormwater Department is working on two Capital Improvement Projects:
- The Jamacha Drainage Channel Upgrade, which focuses on improving stormwater infrastructure to enhance flood protection and environmental resilience.
- The Beta Street Storm Drain Improvements project, which focuses on upgrading aging stormwater infrastructure to enhance drainage capacity and reduce flood risks in the surrounding area.
The city of San Diego reports it is taking proactive steps to ensure the safety of residents living in floodplain areas by distributing educational pamphlets with vital information on how to prepare for potential future flooding.
The informational brochures, which were sent to about 10,000 residents who live in or own property in a floodplain, contain essential guidelines on emergency preparedness, evacuation plans, flood insurance and other critical flood-related resources.
Property owners are also reminded they may qualify for a 15% discount on flood insurance premiums.
For more information and resources on how to properly prepare before a storm, please visit the city’s Storm Preparedness webpage.
What Has and Hasn’t Happened in the Year Since San Diego’s Devastating Floods
This story is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.
Jessica Calix has tried to make the 33-foot travel trailer she and her son Chago share at a north San Diego RV Park feel like their old rental home in Southcrest.
She’s set up benches and toys outside for Chago and his friends to play with, strung lights over the trailer the way she used to over her front door, and hung up a smiling sun ornament that looks like the one they lost in the flooding that devastated parts of southeastern San Diego on Jan. 22.
But lately Chago has been asking Calix a question that breaks her heart, one that she doesn’t know the answer to: Will we ever live in an apartment again?
“I basically told him, ‘We’re not going to be able to move soon,’” Calix said, sitting outside her trailer on a recent evening. “How do I explain the current housing market to an 8-year-old?”
Calix and Chago are among approximately 5,000 San Diego-area residents impacted by the historic downpour last January that led to dramatic flooding in parts of the city and county, with particularly severe damage in Southcrest and Shelltown. The mother and son were among hundreds of people who suffered severe property damage and displacement. Five people died. While some flood survivors have been able to return home, many others are still struggling to recover, rebuild their homes or find new places to live. Some survivors, particularly renters like Calix, have been forced to restart life elsewhere, with little hope of returning to their old communities.
Extreme flooding events, even in regions typically associated with dry weather like Southern California, are becoming more common as the climate warms. Climate change, driven primarily by burning fossil fuels, is changing weather patterns, leading to heavier and more dangerous downpours that can overwhelm infrastructure designed for more predictable times.
But Calix and others impacted by the disaster insist there is another force that exacerbated the flooding, one that also led to what many see as a disjointed and inadequate disaster response: Decades of government neglect and indifference toward San Diego’s lower income neighborhoods. These neighborhoods, located primarily in southeastern San Diego city where much of the flooding happened, are among the most economically stressed and environmentally burdened areas in the region. They were also historically redlined — a racist, government-sponsored practice that made it difficult for people in those neighborhoods to get financial services such as mortgages and insurance, and concentrated low-income and people of color in flood-prone areas.
Residents say the legacy of discrimination continues to this day through lack of city investment in flood-control infrastructure, and inadequate disaster planning and support for those affected. The result is even greater hardship and precarity for people and communities already on the edge. The situation is also a microcosm of the inequitable distribution of risks from climate change, and an example of the challenges communities and governments must grapple with as floods and other weather-related disasters become more frequent.
“What happened on that day was a planning disaster,” said Andrea Guerrero, executive director of Alliance San Diego, a community organization whose offices in Barrio Logan were damaged in the flood. “That climate event happened throughout the county, but where was it felt, it was felt in the places where the city had failed to modernize and update its infrastructure.”
Alliance San Diego is among approximately 700 people and organizations now suing the city, alleging it failed to maintain stormwater infrastructure, and instead prioritized investments in wealthier communities. They point to a 2020 city report that said segments of Chollas Creek, which flooded during the storm, had not been maintained and had the potential to cause property damage. The lawsuit also notes the city’s admission of a severe lack of funding to maintain stormwater infrastructure. Last year, the city estimated it needed about $9 billion in infrastructure upgrades.
Nicole Darling,director of communications for the city, said it does not comment on pending litigation. But she said the city dispatched over 300 staff members to clean out storm drains and inlets before the rainstorm, including critical drains in the Chollas Creek area. One segment, close to Beta Street in Southcrest which suffered severe damage, was scheduled for upcoming debris removal at the time the storm happened, she said in an email.
Darling emphasized that the storm was historic and its impact unpredictable.
“This was an unprecedented storm,” she said. “It was the fourth wettest day in history. We’ve never seen this level of flooding before.”
Guerrero and others participating in the lawsuit said they want the city to compensate survivors for their losses and do more to prevent the Chollas Creek stormwater channel from flooding. Some community organizers and flood survivors are demanding other changes as well.
Clariza Marin, CFO for the Harvey Family Foundation, a community organization that has been on the front lines of helping those affected, said the response on the ground has been chaotic. She said local authorities need to work in collaboration with residents to create a disaster preparedness plan that reflects what community members need, so they can be better prepared for future disasters. She and other residents interviewed said they also want the city and county to provide more support to help the many survivors, both homeowners and former renters, who either didn’t receive aid or didn’t get enough to help them rebuild their lives. This would include assisting people like Calix who were displaced from the floods but didn’t benefit from county and city financial aid to help them find housing.
“All of our resiliency planning should be community driven,” Marin said. “It shouldn’t be about scrambling to tell (residents) what I can do for you, what you’re going to have to accept.”
Darling pointed to various efforts by the city to support flood survivors, including money for temporary lodging and help for small businesses. She said city officials have been attending public meetings and listening to community feedback since the disaster. The city has also been distributing pamphlets to residents lining in floodplain areas about how to prepare for potential flooding in the future, she added.
Neglected Communities
Calix, who is part African American, liked the multicultural community in the area around Beta Street in Southcrest where she and Chago settled in 2020. The sounds and smells were familiar. She felt comfortable. She liked the cost of rent even more — $1,500 for two bedrooms, the same as she’d paid for a one-bedroom apartment in the northern, more expensive part of the city.
About 80 years ago, the federal government categorized large swaths of southeastern San Diego, such as Southcrest, as “hazardous,” declaring that the properties there were “high risk” for defaulting on loans largely because of the people who lived there: laborers, immigrants and people of color. Although redlining has since been outlawed, its impact continues to this day, with people in historically redlined communities experiencing higher rates of poverty and ill health than those in other non-redlined areas. Southcrest, Shelltown and other neighborhoods that suffered flood damage including Logan Heights and Barrio Logan have disproportionately higher rates of residents living in poverty compared to other parts of the city. These residents are also exposed to other negative factors that can impact their health, such as pollution from diesel fumes, hazardous waste sites and lead from housing, according to California’s Environmental Protection Agency.
It’s these types of economically and environmentally stressed locations that climate scientists say are most vulnerable to flooding, and where populations have the hardest time recovering from natural disasters. People of color and those living in mobile homes, in particular, are disproportionately exposed to flooding, research shows. And these same populations as well as low-income people in general, have the most difficulty accessing federal flood disaster assistance.
“We know that risks of climate change are absolutely higher in communities of concern or communities that are historically marginalized,” said Darbi Berry, director of climate and environmental programs at the University of San Diego’s Nonprofit Institute and director of the San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative.
But southeastern San Diego is also a haven for people priced out from more affluent areas of the city. Some neighborhoods are full of paid-off homes where families have lived for generations. Low-wage workers and immigrants are also drawn here, looking for an affordable place to rent in a city where the cost of housing seems to rise by the day.
A Shocking Loss
Calix’s son, Chago, turned 8 the day the flood destroyed their rental home.The day started out normal enough. Calix dropped her son off at school in Point Loma, resisting Chago’s pleas to let him stay home for his birthday. It was drizzling but she thought nothing of it. She promised to deliver some treats for him and his classmates later in the day and drove to a nearby party supply store.
But during her drive, normality ended. It started raining intensely. At an intersection, Calix noticed a car stuck in what looked like floodwater. By the time she got to the party supply store, she’d passed numerous other flooded streets and stranded cars. The store was closed and the parking lot flooded. Her mind leapt to the rental apartment she and Chago shared in Southcrest, 10 miles south. “Was it OK?” she wondered. “Were her neighbors OK?”
It wasn’t until five hours later, after the floodwaters receded, that Calix was able to return to Southcrest and find out. She encountered devastation: streets and homes caked in black sludge, cars piled on top of each other, dead animals, shellshocked neighbors — some of whom had narrowly escaping drowning. Her apartment looked like the inside of a muddy blender. Her and Chago’s furniture, clothes and other possessions were destroyed, including her father’s ashes and recently opened Christmas presents.
“To see all that devastation at once, it was very desperate,” said Calix, who spent the next several days trying to salvage what she could: a couple of bikes, a pet snake. “There was probably more stuff I could have saved off the walls, things up in cabinets, but I had to just walk away. I couldn’t do it anymore. And neither could my kid.”
Renters in Peril
Some of the people who suffer the most in the wake of flooding and other natural disasters are renters — a population that accounts for a third of U.S. households. Renters tend to have less wealth than homeowners, are less likely to have insurance to recoup lost belongings or the costs associated with displacement, and also receive less help from the government after disasters. To add insult to injury, research shows that rents for the lowest-income households rise significantly after floods.
In other words, the people with the fewest financial resources to weather losses from a natural disaster get the least help to recover, and then end up paying even more for housing if they’re lucky enough to find another place to live. In California, and in San Diego especially — where over one in three households already don’t make enough to meet their basic needs, and where the average rent is over $3,000 a month — losses and displacement from a flood can result in a compounding cycle of long-term financial pain and housing insecurity.
That’s the predicament Calix found herself in after the flooding. Even though she received $5,000 in emergency assistance from FEMA, that wasn’t enough to secure another apartment rental that she could afford on her salary as a massage therapist, she said. She was also in debt from having to replace clothes, toys and everyday items she lost in the flood, as well as extra gas and food while living in the hotels.
“It’s overwhelming … ” Calix said. “It shouldn’t be that way.”
The county and city of San Diego, with support from other local cities and community organizations as well as the federal government, have tried to mitigate the challenges facing displaced flood survivors. The county allocated $33.7 million to recovery efforts, including to help provide food, emergency lodging, fund home and infrastructure repairs and help residents secure federal disaster aid. Some of this funding went to a program that provided temporary accommodation for people in hotels after the flooding, and housed more than 2,200 people, or nearly 900 households, at its peak. That program ended in June. With about $7 million in support from the county and city, the San Diego Housing Commission then provided up to $15,000 in assistance to people still in emergency lodging near the end of the program to help them pay for rent, security deposits and other expenses to relocate.
But there have been problems. Numerous participants in the temporary lodging program have complained they were housed in unsafe or unsanitary hotels and evicted or threatened with eviction because of payment delays from the contractor hired to run the program. Many people who needed accommodation didn’t even get the help because they didn’t know about the program, had trouble accessing it, or were afraid to seek help because of their immigration status, said Clariza Marin, CFO of the Harvey Family Foundation. Others left before they were ready because of conflicting information from FEMA workers that led them to believe staying in the hotels would jeopardize their federal aid money, Marin and Calix said.
The housing commission also limited who could apply for the financial assistance to those still in the program on May 23 — a date by which many had left. That meant just 313 families initially received aid. The commission recently expanded eligibility to another 194 families who had applied but left the hotels earlier, offering them up to $5,500, But that doesn’t cover all of the approximately 900 families that were in the program at its peak.
Calix is one of the flood survivors and former renters who, so far, has not qualified for financial help from the housing commission. She decided to leave the program after three months because at the last hotel she stayed at, she felt unsafe. She was also hearing about other people getting evicted and got nervous that she and Chago would be next. She never applied for aid because she assumed she wouldn’t qualify. Now she’s angry that she, and many of her neighbors, have been left out.
“We’re all in a hole, and we’re trying to get out and they just keep, you know, letting us fall deeper,” she said. “To be told you get no help and other people do, it is very frustrating.”
Low-Income Homeowners Suffer Too
The disaster has been devastating for homeowners too. Many are low income and elderly and didn’t have any or enough flood insurance. Several of those who received money from FEMA said it wasn’t enough to cover the cost of the damage. According to Marin, some residents have been forced to take out loans, pay for repairs using credit cards, or live in flood-damaged moldy homes. Others have given up, abandoning or selling their residences to out-of-town buyers, she said.
Juan Chavez, a retired truck driver, has been trying to help his mother-in-law, 79, hold on to the Beta Street home she lived in for 30 years before the flood forced her to move in with him and his wife. She is wheelchair-bound and has dementia. Although the home had some flood insurance, the payout barely covered the cost of basic cleanup, he said. Chavez estimates he and his wife, a secretary, will have to cobble together $100,000 of their own money to make the home livable again.
Across the street, Harold Roberts, 74, is still trying to get his home fixed after it was flooded with several feet of water. A caregiver for the elderly, he said he couldn’t afford the $6,000 a year he would have needed for flood insurance on his home, and the FEMA money he received only partially covered the damage. He lost his car and truck in the flood and spent six months at a motel in Chula Vista paid for by the county. Now he’s among dozens of his neighbors receiving assistance from the Harvey Family Foundation to restore their homes.
“A lot of families, for a situation that they didn’t cause, they’re forced to go into debt in order to save what little they do have,” said Armon Harvey, the foundation’s CEO. “They lost cars, they lost everything, and now they have to dig into their own pockets, into their savings, just to save their homes.”
Flood recovery is expensive. The average annual cost of flooding in the U.S. is over $32 billion and rising. According to a recent study featured in the Fifth National Climate Assessment, California lost an average of $1.7 billion annually to floods as of 2020. That’s expected to rise to almost $2 billion by 2050. Yet federal disaster assistance typically doesn’t provide enough support to the people who need it the most, research shows.
A Last Resort
After several weeks in the hotel program, Calix learned that her grandfather was selling an old trailer. He offered to give it to her, if she paid for repairs and moving it. Calix saw it as her ticket out of the hotel program, and a chance at some kind of stability for herself and her son. She racked up more debts on her credit cards to pay for new tires, towing and a parking spot at a local RV Park.
Calix now pays about $1,600 a month for her spot at the RV park. She and Chago have to move to a different park every six months because stays are time limited. She said she’s grateful to have a place to live, but it feels temporary. She’s still in debt because of the disaster, and her credit score has suffered. If she had received $15,000 from the Housing Commission like some of the other survivors, she could have paid off her debt and stabilized her financial situation enough to get an apartment, she said.
“It would have made a huge difference,” she said.“We would be a lot further along. I’m basically falling behind and my stability is hanging on by a thread, to be honest, and that’s the truth of it. We really needed that help and we’re not the only ones.”
Finding Solutions
The Harvey Family Foundation has been trying to stem the exodus of low-income renters and homeowners from the flood-struck areas. Over the past year, they’ve received about $700,000 in city and county funds and raised another $500,000 in philanthropic support to help repair homes in Southcrest, Shelltown and neighboring communities. So far they’ve completed 73 home repairs with 14 more in the pipeline. These include rentals, such as those owned by Tony Tricarico, 77, who before the flood rented 11 small apartments on his Beta Street property for between $1,200 to $1,400 a month.
The flood destroyed Tricarico’s home and all the rental units on the property. He had no flood insurance and didn’t qualify for FEMA aid. He was ready to give up and sell, he said. But the Harvey Family Foundation offered to help him restore the units if he didn’t raise the rents and offered them back to the displaced families. He agreed. So far, three units are fixed and rented, another three will be completed soon. At least one of the families is living in a trailer in a nearby alleyway waiting to return, he said.
“I wanted to help” the renters, Tricarico said. “I’ve known them 20 years, I’ve watched their children grow up.”
Much more funding is needed to help with repairs, Marin said. Even now she’s receiving calls from distressed homeowners who have run out of insurance or FEMA money, or are newly discovering mold or other problems in their homes caused by the floods, she said.
Investments in infrastructure to prevent future flooding and make San Diego’s most vulnerable communities more resilient to the effects of climate change are vital, Berry with UC San Diego said. Infrastructure projects should include green, nature-based solutions that remove concrete and create more spaces such as parks where excess water can be absorbed into the soil, she added. It’s also important that officials take care to avoid “green gentrification” that drives up housing costs and displaces low-income residents, she said.
A state initiative called the Transformative Climate Communities program is working to address this challenge by funding community-led development and infrastructure projects designed to simultaneously improve climate resiliency and bring economic benefits to California’s most disadvantaged communities. These include investments in affordable housing, bike lanes and walking paths, public transportation and community gardens. Fresno is one community that has successfully used this funding through its Transform Fresno initiative, Berry said. More recently, the San Diego Foundation and Environmental Health Coalition also received the funds to develop climate and community resilience projects in San Diego’s central historic barrios.
The dilemma is that more investment is needed and San Diego taxpayers are reluctant to fund infrastructure projects, Berry said. Measure E, which would have raised the city’s sales tax by 1 percent and generated up to $400 million in additional general-fund revenue, including for infrastructure, was narrowly defeated in November.
She said she’s hopeful that the passage of state Proposition 4, a $10 billion bond to help California pay for efforts to address the impacts of climate change, including flood control and sea level rise protections, will further improve climate resiliency in San Diego and elsewhere. But it won’t be enough, she said.
“We can’t keep waiting for disasters (in order) to respond,” she said. “We need to be proactive and not reactive, because we’re well aware that the reactive systems that we have are not sufficient … If we aren’t building resilience, it’s not going to get easier to respond” when disasters happen.
‘This Cannot Be the Norm‘
Back at the RV park in north San Diego, Calix is trying to keep herself and Chago focused on the positive. But she, like many other flood survivors, is worried about the next disaster. Worried that the city still hasn’t fixed the problems with its infrastructure. Worried that the local government has no plan in place to better help future disaster victims.
But, for her son, she takes a deep breath and tries to set those worries aside.
“At least we have a place to live,” she tells Chago. “At least we’re not living in a car or sleeping on friend’s couches,” like some of the other people they know.
At least they have each other. At least they survived.
Reporter Lauren DeLaunay Miller contributed to this story.
This story was produced in collaboration with the California Health Report.
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