Jan. 22, 2024 seemed like a typical rainy day to Jessica Calix.
She dropped her son Chago off at school in Point Loma, then headed to Party City. It was his eighth birthday.
As she drove, she began to notice cars stuck in water. She remembered closing and locking the screen door of her Southcrest home, but not the wooden door.
She FaceTimed her neighbors to check on her house. They answered with water up to their chins.
She lost almost everything that day.
“The whole house looks like if you filled it up with water and turned on the blender, right? Like, everything is just thrown everywhere,” she said, remembering.
From the black water she pulled their bicycles — which they still need repairs — a few toys, and their pet ball python, Princess Peach.
She tucked the snake, which they now call their “little miracle baby,” into her jacket and snuck her into a restaurant.
Over a birthday dinner with Chago, she lied. She said the power had gone out, but everything was fine.
But Chago had questions.
"If everything's fine, why is my snake in your jacket?" he said.
Calix and Chago entered the county’s hotel voucher program in February, along with roughly 1,300 other families.
She said the hotel placements didn’t always feel safe for a single mother with a young child. And they were never stable. The check-out date would arrive and they would pack up, only to be told it was extended again.
Her Southcrest neighbors had a strong community together.
Now, they were scattered all over the county.
Many of them lost their important documents in the floods. Not having copies of their leases on hand made it difficult to apply for FEMA assistance. And some landlords remodeled and raised the rent, she said.
They were displaced into a rental market much more expensive than when most of them had last signed leases. Many don’t even qualify for new leases because their incomes are too low.
Calix had been paying $1,650 in monthly rent, she said. Now, the average two-bedroom in San Diego County rents for almost $2,300.
Chago was tired of the instability. He put his foot down, she said. No more hotels.
They moved out of the hotel voucher program in March.
“You were constantly having to, like, survive, live, work, school, and also figure out, ‘Where are you going to go next?’” she said. “Nobody left the hotels because they were secure and recovered. Nobody's secure and recovered. People just ended up in their cars — in tents.”
She got lucky, she said. Her grandfather offered her an old travel trailer.
When she first pulled into her space in the RV park, she was gut punched — it backs onto a stormwater channel.
But her anxiety was eased after a storm in March. She saw how the water filled the channel but ran through without flooding.
It wasn’t like the stormwater channel in Southcrest, which was filled with so many plants and trees and animals she assumed it was a nature preserve, she said. Residents are now suing the city, saying the flooding happened because they failed to properly maintain it.
She had to put new tires on the RV, learn to hook it up and clean out the septic tank and work the tricky water heater. It needs a new toilet. But it’s a home.
She put a little table outside for Chago, a too-small toy car and track that he rides anyway, and new plants.
She found she didn’t want any decor that reminded her of what she used to have, except for one small token — a sun and moon that hangs on the RV.
Living in the RV park lets Calix stretch the FEMA rental assistance she received farther than the couple months of San Diego rent it would cover.
Still, like hundreds of flood survivors, she’s struggling to rebuild her life.
She didn’t know about the housing commission’s flood recovery funds — and their restrictions — until KPBS reported about it earlier this month.
“It's not right to say we have $6 million (still undistributed), but you can't have it. Figure it out on your own,” she said. “It was like really, really heartbreaking to read that.”
The county restricted the funding they gave the San Diego Housing Commission (SDHC) to the 359 families still using hotel vouchers on May 23, when the agreement was signed.
The city gave additional funding to the recovery program this fiscal year. The program applies the same requirements to all applicants.
SDHC is offering rental assistance for up to six months per family, or a lump sum cash option of $15,100.
If funds remain uncommitted after all approved families choose between those two options, a spokesperson said they will reassess with councilmembers how to use them to best support continuing flood recovery.
However, he anticipates they will spend all of the funding on helping the 359 families currently eligible.
Calix thinks the May 23 date is not a good measure of need.
She said she’s in group chats and Facebook groups where flood survivors say they need help for basic needs, like food for their kids, or medical procedures.
Because even when something upends your entire life, life keeps going.
“We work hard, we keep fighting, we fight for our future, fighting for our kids. But one little hiccup, one little disruption in that, you could lose everything,” she said. “It’s kind of a critical point for a lot of us because things aren’t getting easier since January.”
Applications close for the flood recovery program on Saturday.
