{"id":388152,"date":"2026-01-04T23:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T23:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/388152\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T23:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T23:01:09","slug":"flooding-forces-hundreds-to-flee-homeless-shelter-in-san-diego-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/388152\/","title":{"rendered":"Flooding forces hundreds to flee homeless shelter in San Diego | California"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the third time in seven years, hundreds of people had to flee a homeless shelter in downtown San Diego<\/a> this week after a heavy storm dropped a month\u2019s worth of rain, causing floods.<\/p>\n

The area received 2in of rain on New Year\u2019s Day, which broke local records and forced multiple water rescues, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Officials evacuated the Bridge shelter, a massive gray tent, on New Year\u2019s Day, and about 325 men and women moved to a gym in a local park, the newspaper reported.<\/p>\n

Southern California has<\/a> seen<\/a> heavy storms<\/a> in recent weeks \u2013 causing the state\u2019s governor, Gavin Newsom, to declare a state of emergency \u2013 and the rainfall was expected to continue through the weekend.<\/p>\n

The winter storms come less than a year after wildfires<\/a> devastated much of the area. The Los Angeles fire department issued an evacuation warning<\/a> in a burn-scarred area because of potential debris flow due to the rainfall, and the National Weather Service issued a flood watch<\/a> and stated that areas near burn scars are prone to flash flooding.<\/p>\n

Such extreme weather events are expected to increase because of climate change and the people most affected by such disasters are often those experiencing homelessness, according to recent<\/a> research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot a great start to the new year,\u201d Bob McElroy, the CEO of Alpha Project, the non-profit that runs the shelter, told the Union-Tribune.<\/p>\n

Hundreds staying at the shelter also had to evacuate in 2018<\/a> and 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re definitely seeing more homelessness, more housing disruption, as a result of these disasters,\u201d Steve Berg, of the Washington-based National Alliance to End Homelessness, told NBC News in 2023.<\/p>\n

Such events often reduce the housing supply and make it more difficult for people who lose their homes to find affordable housing<\/a>. In 2024, 11 million people in the United States were displaced from their homes by natural disasters, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, an international nongovernmental organization, reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After wildfires broke out in 2023 in Maui, Hawaii, the state saw an 83% increase in homelessness, according to a US Department of Housing and Urban Development report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cDisasters like wildfires and hurricanes cause the displacement of housed and unhoused people alike,\u201d a Georgetown Environmental Law Review report stated<\/a>. \u201cIn short-term events, like evacuations, stop-gap measures like temporary housing and camping may be sufficient to meet needs. But when disasters damage or destroy housing, survivors may seek permanent solutions, like new housing, only to find such additional housing unavailable because it was also destroyed and other scarcity at play in the real estate market broadly.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2024, flooding forced Bridge shelter residents to flee through waist-deep water, the Union-Tribune reported. About five years earlier, a flash flood hit the same shelter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a lot to scare me, and that scared me,\u201d one person staying at the shelter told the Union-Tribune<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s storm again ravaged the property, at a time when the city already did not have enough beds<\/a> for people needing shelter.<\/p>\n

Michael Coats, 68, who had been staying under the tent with his wife, remained optimistic despite being homeless and having to flee the shelter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call him God,\u201d Coats told a local NBC affiliate<\/a>. \u201cIt gives me my inspiration to keep trudging through this, from being on the street to where I am today and where I will end up one day\u201d with \u201cmy wife and I back into another apartment\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the third time in seven years, hundreds of people had to flee a homeless shelter in downtown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-388152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}