Hundreds of people had to flee a homeless shelter in downtown San Diego this week for the third time in seven years after a storm brought a month’s worth of rain, causing flooding.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that 2 inches of rain fell in the area on New Year’s Day, breaking local records and forcing multiple water rescues.
Officials evacuated the Bridge Shelter, a large gray tent, on New Year’s Day and about 325 men and women moved to a gym at a local park, the newspaper reported.
Southern California has been hit by storms in recent weeks, leading Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency, with rain expected to continue through the weekend.
The winter storm arrives less than a year after wildfires devastated much of the region. The Los Angeles Fire Department issued an evacuation warning in the burn area due to the possibility of rain that could trigger mudslides, and the National Weather Service issued a flood warning and said flash flooding was likely to occur near the burn area.
According to recent research, such extreme weather events are expected to increase due to climate change, and the people most affected by such disasters are often the homeless.
“It’s not a great start to the new year,” Bob McElroy, CEO of Project Alpha, the nonprofit that operates the shelter, told the Union-Tribune.
In 2018 and 2024, hundreds of people living in shelters also had to be evacuated.
“We’re definitely going to see more homelessness and more housing disruptions as a result of these disasters,” Steve Berg of the Washington-based National Alliance to End Homelessness told NBCNews in 2023.
Such events tend to reduce housing supply and make it more difficult for people who lose their housing to find affordable housing. The International NGO Internal Displacement Monitoring Center reported that 11 million people in the United States were displaced by natural disasters in 2024.
According to a report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, homelessness increased by 83% in the state after wildfires broke out in Maui, Hawaii, in 2023.
“Disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes can displace both housed and unhoused people,” the Georgetown Environmental Law Review reports. “During short-term events such as evacuations, stopgap solutions such as temporary housing and camping may be sufficient to meet needs. But when disasters damage or destroy housing, survivors may seek permanent solutions, such as new housing, only to find that additional housing is unavailable because housing has also been destroyed and other scarcities prevail in the housing market.”
In 2024, flooding forced residents of the Bridge Shelter to flee waist-deep water, the Union-Tribune reported. About five years ago, a flash flood hit the same shelter.
“It takes a long time to scare me, and it scares me,” one shelter resident told the Union-Tribune.
This week’s storms again destroyed the property at a time when the city no longer has enough beds to accommodate people in need of shelter.
Michael Coats, 68, who has been living under a tent with his wife, remains optimistic despite being homeless and having to flee a shelter.
“I call him God,” Coates told the local NBC affiliate. “It gave me the inspiration to keep on trudging from being on the street to where I am today and where I will end up one day,” he said. “My wife and I went back to another apartment.”
