After the Flood: Can San Diego Rise?

The Challenge of Building a Better Infrastructure for All and Truly Addressing Historic Inequities

The recent flooding in San Diego showed a lot about our city’s continuing racial and class divide.  While we saw damage from the storms across San Diego County, historically underserved communities took the biggest hit.  As the Voice of San Diego reported, over 1000 residents have been displaced from their homes and there is a good amount of lingering anger. 

In many ways, as the impacts of climate change begin to be felt in earnest, the devastation brought by the near-record rainfall is simply a preview of things to come as we struggle to adapt to a new climate reality that includes more severe storms as well as more drought and extreme heat.  

The truth is that even if we intensify our efforts and start to take still more serious action to abate the worst impacts of climate change, there will, inevitably, be a price to pay for decades of inaction as we play catch-up and hope that smart, strategic efforts at adaptation can succeed and protect our communities from climate disasters like winter flooding as well as drought and excessive heat.  

Of course, if we address these looming challenges with an eye toward social justice, the larger question becomes who will suffer the worst consequences for a problem that has been disproportionately caused by fossil fuel companies and the most affluent among us who are responsible for the lion’s share of carbon emissions.  

Globally, nationally, and locally, the poor and people of color have faced the harshest outcomes of the emerging Anthropocene era, and, it appears, San Diego is no exception to that rule.  Decades of neglect regarding essential infrastructure, particularly in more working-class communities of color, have come home to roost.  

In the wake of the recent disaster, local activist groups like Alliance San Diego were quick to recognize this, as their recent statement indicates:

• America’s Finest City has shown us that low-income, marginalized, and unhoused communities, which are largely communities of color, are the least of its priorities . . .  The City’s inaction is blatant racism fueled by countless excuses. 

• Over 100+ families lost their homes due to the flooding and many more were displaced, especially in predominantly Black and Brown communities. Some of those families waited on rooftops, surrounded by over 5ft of water, for help that never arrived. Some are still living in unsafe conditions because they have no way to access the few resources offered by the city. We know that at least three housing sites for homeless residents were destroyed, inundated by streets that turned to rushing rivers of short-circuited cars and debris. Those roads are now dry and caked with contaminated mud that is constantly dispersed into the air by every vehicle that drives over them. All of this could have been prevented. 

• For over a decade, community members have used appropriate, city funded channels to repeatedly request the city to maintain and clear storm drains of obvious vegetation and build more resilient infrastructure to ensure safety; the City has outright ignored the needs. They’ve procrastinated, lacked urgency, and spent their energy directing resources to shinier, more affluent communities. We all deserve the infrastructure that keeps us safe. The unfortunate devastation that is widespread in Black and Brown neighborhoods could have been prevented by simply exercising care and humanity. 

I contacted the Executive Director of Alliance San Diego, Andrea Guerrero, and asked if she had anything to add beyond their statement. She did not hesitate to elaborate on the failures of our city government to address the needs of Southeast San Diego: 

• The fundamental role of government is to help, not harm its residents. But the floods of January 22, 2024 exposed a devastating reality in San Diego: City leaders continuously make decisions — like what neighborhoods to invest in and what infrastructure to improve — that harm, not help, low-income communities who are predominantly people of color. 

• For years, the City has neglected the pleas of residents in Southeast San Diego to fix the city’s storm water drainage system in order to keep them safe. On January 22nd, that neglect turned into negligence that caused city infrastructure to fail and endangered thousands of residents who were suddenly overwhelmed by flood waters that engulfed families, cars, and homes, and destroyed nearly everything in its path. Adding insult to injury, the water that rushed in was contaminated, causing skin rashes and respiratory problems after the waters receded. 

• Although the City long knew about the vulnerabilities of the stormwater drainage system in Southeast San Diego, it did little to fix it, choosing year over year to invest resources in other projects and in other parts of the city that were more affluent and more White. 

• There was no plan to keep Southeast safe from flooding. No one came when the water rose. Residents saved themselves, swimming through sewage to unblock drains, pulling neighbors onto rooftops, and in at least one tragic incident, helping a family float out a loved one who died in the floods. All while first responders waited at the outskirts of their neighborhoods until the water levels went down.   

• The lack of a plan before the floods was compounded by the lack of a plan after. In the week following the floods, thousands of residents were left without public resources. They relied on the compassion of community groups, and they relied on each other. With no working cars to travel, they ate the food brought in to them while they worked tirelessly to throw out their life’s possessions and rip out walls and floors in a race against time to salvage what they could. 

• There is no excuse for the failure of the government to help the residents of Southeast, but City leaders can turn things around by accepting, not deflecting, responsibility for the trauma caused and involving the community in plans to make them whole. This will take more than a warm meal, hotel voucher, and clean clothes. It involves more than a temporary cleaning of the channels and drains that destroyed lives. Rather, it will take a continuous commitment to invest public resources that help, not harm, communities who have long been neglected so they, too, can thrive.

Khalid Alexander, Founder and President of the Board of Pillars of the Community, echoed those concerns, observing that: 

• This flood exposed how little the City cares for its constituents in Southeast San Diego. The City refused to invest our taxes in ways that would prevent the flooding and it refused to help the families in the aftermath of the flooding. For the most part, the City was nowhere. Organizations and individuals on the ground were forced to respond with the little resources they had as if our communities were a part of some distant village in a far-off country. 

He explained that Pillars, along with a coalition of individuals and grassroots organizations from Southeast San Diego, has been helping residents impacted by the floods with their immediate basic needs in the wake of the inadequate response from the city. Folks from this community alliance helped deliver food and clothing, found shelter for people, and pitched in to assist residents in emptying out their entire lives and everything they owned from their houses that were damaged by the flooding and move it onto the street to be thrown away by city workers. Along with these groups, there were also a good number of volunteers from the local labor movement who showed up to lend a hand in the community.  

All the while, Alliance San Diego has been circulating a petition calling for the city to immediately clear storm drains and prioritize investment in infrastructure in the most impacted areas among other demands. The City Council recently responded by calling for more investment in flood prevention and a heat action plan despite looming budgetary shortfalls.  Thus, the future will tell if such initiatives have staying power once the storms are out of the news and the deficit takes center stage.  

Will San Diego’s Democratic supermajority risk significant political capital by pushing hard for revenue measures that might help fund these projects or will our city’s historical aversion to taxes and fees prevail if more affluent communities balk at the notion that addressing deeply rooted inequities is the key to a better San Diego for us all?