SAN DIEGO — The San Diego County Office of Education has seen a spike in families in southeast San Diego and National City requesting to stay in an emergency hotel since last week’s flooding caused severe damage to homes.
As hundreds of families seek resources from the county’s Local Assistance Center, the rise in requests for temporary shelter reveal dozens of families have been temporarily displaced.
Homeless Education Services Coordinator Susie Terry said she’s seen an “unprecedented” amount of interest in the temporary hotel program, particularly from San Diego Unified School District and National School District.
“That’s a lot of the area where families have been impacted,” Terry said.
The Jan. 22 winter storm hit parts of southeast San Diego and National City hardest. City crews and volunteers are still cleaning up, and preparing for an incoming storm.
Terry said the calls started to pick up on Wednesday and Thursday, two days after the floods. Her office referred about 20 families on Thursday. On Friday, Terry said her office referred 35 families to hotels – three times as many as they would see in a typical day. That pace remained through Monday and Tuesday.
Hotels for homeless students started with pandemic relief funds
After receiving federal COVID relief dollars specific to homeless children and youth, the county education office worked with San Diego Youth Services to create a program accessible to any eligible student in the county. Families can stay for five nights, and up to 10 or 15 in some cases.
In the 2023 calendar year the program referred 935 families to temporary hotels. Since the hotel program began in April 2022, it has served about 1,450 families, according to Terry.
“We didn’t know when we started the hotel program that the need was as great,” Terry said.
Rising number of homeless students
The number of students reported homeless in San Diego County schools increased 11% from the 2021-22 school year to 2022-23 school year, state data show. The California Department of Education’s census day enrollment numbers show more than 16,650 students were homeless in the 2022-23 school year.
At the start of the 2023-24 school year, San Diego Unified reported more than 8,000 students were homeless — a seven-year high, according to data obtained by CBS 8.
To process referrals to the hotel program, the county education office verifies students are enrolled in schools and meet the federal definition of homeless students.
Without this service, students and their families would fall in line with all other families trying to secure hotel vouchers, Terry said. The education-run shelter allows education officials to move more quickly.
“If we get a referral by a certain time today, they can be set up to check in tomorrow,” Terry said.
The funding for this program – and many other education services – is set to expire this fall.
“Once it's gone, the families would just go back to accessing services the way any other family would,” Terry said.
WATCH RELATED: National City apartment complex gives flood victims days to find new homes (Jan. 27, 2024)