The San Diego Housing Commission secured hundreds of hotel rooms for residents forced from their homes by last month’s devastating flood.
To do so, money and staff were diverted from the commission’s main mission: providing homeless services and low-income housing. That caused responses for requested shelter and housing vouchers to be suspended or slowed down.
Emergency resources were taken from those areas as well as from capital improvements and maintenance programs for the thousands of affordable housing units overseen by the commission, according to the agency.
In a sometimes emotional meeting last Friday, commissioners effusively praised Housing Commission staff for stepping into the breach, while expressing frustration that they had to do so at the expense of people in need who typically rely on them.
“The ability to respond to these (normal) referrals is extremely limited right now,” said Lisa Jones, president and CEO of the agency.
That was further complicated because flooding at some homeless shelters required people to be moved elsewhere.
Commission board urged the city and county of San Diego and other public agencies to pull together and assess how the region can better respond to such a disaster in the future, particularly in the aftermath when many homes are uninhabitable. At least one board member decried the city’s decadeslong failure to provide adequate flood protection infrastructure that might have lessened the devastation.
Eugene “Mitch” Mitchell, the board chair, recalled a telephone conversation he had with Jones not long after the torrential rains of Jan. 22.
“We have a situation that we did not expect, that maybe we aren’t even trained for,” Mitchell said he told Jones. “But there’s a need for us. (It’s) the time and the moment.”
Such emergency action may not be among the commission’s core responsibilities, but the agency’s knowledge of getting people housing, temporary and long-term, came into play.
Jones and commissioners said they hoped the agency would receive reimbursements from the federal and/or state government. On Monday, President Joe Biden approved the request for a major disaster declaration, which will direct federal aid to help San Diego County recover from the historic storm.
Housing Commission officials said the agency stepped in to provide bridge emergency housing until county resources kicked in. The San Diego City Council earlier this month authorized the commission to spend $2.24 million on flood relief.
Jones said commission staff had turned “on a dime” to 25 to 30 hotels to nail down rooms. The top gave an update on the storm response as of Feb. 11
The commission, which is an arm of the city government, had assessed 590 houses (more than 800 homes countywide were reportedly damaged or destroyed). Some 336 families were referred to hotels. Some people also were placed at commission-owned property in the Midway District operated by the Alpha Project.
In all, the commission said it assisted 765 adults, 394 children and 255 pets displaced by flooding.
Numerous nonprofits and private businesses contributed to the flood relief effort. Jones singled out several, including the Lucky Duck Foundation, San Diego Food Bank and Illumina, along with the Alpha Project, which contracts with government agencies to provide homeless services.
Jones suggested there were some bumps for the agency along the way as the problem by the day got “bigger and bigger and bigger.” She suggested a more coordinated approach involving all of the agency’s departments at the outset might have helped.
Ultimately, 80 to 100 people out of a staff of more than 350 were diverted to the flood emergency, though Jones said many others were involved indirectly by trying to pick up normal duties of their colleagues.
Ryan Clumpner, commission vice chair, was among those who lauded the staff, saying that during a crisis “you need to lean in. That’s what you do.”
But Clumpner brought the meeting to a standstill when he gave a lengthy, emotional commentary about how the hardest hit communities were among the most underserved historically by city government.
“Here’s what’s very disturbing to me about this,” Clumpner said, his voice breaking at times. “This problem is the result of underinvestment in specific communities — targeted underinvestment for decades. . .
“We have streets there we haven’t even built sidewalks on, let alone the flood channel. We have streets that flooded repeatedly. We have people who are first-time homeowners, the first in their family to even own a home, whose homes are now destroyed and lost,” Clumpner continued.
“And how are we paying for this? Right now, we’re paying for it by — hopefully temporarily, but we don’t know that — . . . raiding the limited funds that serve some of our most vulnerable residents. We are raiding our homeless services. We are raiding affordable housing maintenance. We are raiding vouchers.
“That is how we are paying for this. That is the absolute worst possible way I can imagine to handle a disaster response. A disaster . . . that was predictable — that everyone saw coming for many years.”
For some time, there have been reports, studies and news stories detailing the city’s infrastructure shortcomings — particularly when it comes to stormwater runoff. That was widely revisited in media coverage following the January floods.
Beyond discussion of the estimated $1.6 billion shortfall in funding for necessary flood control projects, there has been considerable focus on the city’s failure to clear existing drainage channels — despite frequent requests from residents.
There has long been the belief in the impacted neighborhoods that they are shortchanged by the city because they don’t have the political clout of other communities.
When disaster strikes, there’s often a sense of urgency to do something to avoid the same outcome in the future. Such is the case now.
A City Council committee on Wednesday endorsed putting a measure on the November ballot to levy a parcel tax for stormwater projects, a proposal pushed by council President Sean Elo-Rivera. A tax measure for the same purpose was considered in 2022 but never got off the ground, with backers citing a lack of public .
If this one goes to the voters, the question may be whether there’s still that sense of urgency in the fall if San Diego experiences a typical dry summer.
