On Jan. 22, 2024, Ashley Manzano woke up to a torrential downpour outside her grandmother's home on Beta Street in Southcrest. When water started coming up through the floorboards, she knew she had to evacuate. By then the streets were impassable — so she and her grandma, who is now 90 and has early stage dementia, fled to the neighbor's roof.
Today the house is stripped down to the studs, thanks to volunteers and a small amount of public assistance. But the family needs an estimated $189,000 to fully restore the house. Manzano and her grandma are both still couchsurfing. An uncle who lived in the house is now on the streets.
"The home itself was just a safe haven for me and my family," Manzano said. "If ever anybody needed a place to stay, we would just come."
The Jan. 22 floods displaced more than 1,200 people, many of them low income. Some, including Manzano's family, have filed a claim against the city of San Diego for failing to maintain the storm drain system. But it will likely be years before those cases are resolved.
One block from the house, the southern fork of Chollas Creek is mostly cleared of the debris and overgrown vegetation that exacerbated the flooding in Southcrest. The city is planning more than $56 million in upgrades to the neighborhood's storm drains, as well as a number of bioswales — small basins that can collect and filter rainwater, relieving pressure on the larger storm drain system.
Leslie Reynolds, executive director of the nonprofit Groundwork San Diego, said investment in such "blue-green infrastructure" is long overdue, and that it can be combined with other improvements like tree planting that help build a more resilient neighborhood.
"We're very excited about turning this whole area into a sort of pilot project for nature-based water management," Reynolds said. "If you're going to work on flooding in a community, you're going to have to work on heat, and air, and green spaces, and all the things these residents are going to need as the climate worsens."
But while San Diego is making progress on stormwater infrastructure planning, it lacks the funding to actually build all the planned upgrades. To fully fund its stormwater needs, the city would need an additional $1.6 billion — an estimate from last year that has likely since increased.
Reynolds said Measure E, a sales tax increase that was narrowly rejected by city voters last November, could have made a dent in the problem. She noted many low-income communities supported the tax hike while wealthier neighborhoods largely rejected it.
"We're very hopeful that we'll get a (stormwater) ballot initiative in 2026," Reynolds said.
While Southcrest awaits better infrastructure in the long term, Ashley Manzano has more urgent needs. The turmoil and stress of the past year, along with a lack of access to healthy food, has taken a heavy toll on her health. An ophthalmologist told her a build up of fluid in her eye could damage her optic nerves and lead to blindness.
Manzano said she was moved by the volunteer relief efforts to help fire victims in Los Angeles. But she said when disaster strikes a community like hers, it needs support far beyond the immediate aftermath.
"We kind of were a little bit forgotten, even when the flood occurred," Manzano said. "I just hope people help us, because we still need a lot of help as well. As you can see, my home — it still needs a lot of work."
