In early 2023, Griffin Taylor, a new resident of Southeast San Diego’s Valencia Park neighborhood, stumbled upon a local secret. A set of stairs, hidden between homes and woven with murals of vibrant orange, red and purple poppies.
Neighbors often exercised or stopped to chat around the stairs, a gathering place in the community. Soon, the stairs became Taylor’s favorite place to walk his dog and take a break from his busy life.
“Other neighborhoods have the beach or a park — we have the secret stairs,” Taylor said. “It was cool to see this unique space within a community like this … because it's so hidden between the houses, it felt like something private to the neighborhood.”
Then came Jan. 22, 2024. Massive floods swept through Southeast San Diego and decimated the Secret Stairs.
“It wasn't just like oh, it rained, and there was a little flooding. It was like the fences were falling over, “ Taylor said. “I saw neighbors frantically trying to sandbag areas, trying to move their cars out of the way ... move other possessions out of the way.”
As months continued to pass, the debris, mud and fallen walls of nearby homes remained. Plants overtook the center of the pathway. The stairs began to run wild.
A year later, the secret stairs were still a disaster zone and no effort had been made to clean them up, Taylor said.
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“I thought maybe it would take weeks, but it certainly wouldn't take months,” Taylor said. “That made me frustrated to think, here I am in this neighborhood that's historically black and that has been unattended to that this community's needs are not being addressed.”
Taylor wasn’t the only Valencia Park resident with those feelings.
Just a few years prior, resident Barry Pollard, founder of local organization The Urban Collaborative Project, led the effort to decorate the Valencia Stairs. what was already a commonly used space. For him, the stairs had a personal value; he would take them to high school every day.
The Urban Collaborative Project hired artists to paint poppies, representing a local legend of a man in the early 20th century using the pathway to pick the native flowers for his wife back home.
“The whole project just grew on everybody and what was really neat is a lot of the artists we used are artists that live in Valencia Park,” Pollard said. “The kids would come by, they would take a look at it, the neighbors would stick their heads out the window and go, what are you guys doing? What we were trying to do is just beautify the community. And it's really been a labor of love.”
For other residents, the flowers on the stairs provided a sense of pride and recognition to an area that has been overlooked.
“It definitely gave Valencia Park something to say, this is here. You know, that's neat for us. I think that people in Valencia Park are so used to not having any action that any little action means a lot,” said resident Robert Iuliucci.
Iuliucci said the stairs were representative of other unaddressed infrastructure issues in the neighborhood, like unsafe roads.
“Throughout the past six years, we've had five accidents (by our house). One of them, we had someone go airborne, destroy our fence into our yard, like where our kid now is supposed to play,” Iuliucci said. He complained to the city in 2021 and didn’t see any changes.
“No matter what you communicate, there’s a wall or a gap between you and the city,” Iuliucci said.
Two other residents reported having drivers crash into their yards from the lack of safety barriers on the neighborhood roads.
Despite these complaints, once the floods struck, community members expected a quick response. Tina Zeidan, who lives alongside the stairs, recalled her struggle for assistance.
“All the floodwater came through our backyard, it waterfalled in, and then we had a retaining wall that collapsed into the walkway,” Zeidan said.
Community members complained to San Diego City Councilmember Henry Foster, who represents Valencia Park. Foster said the ultimate responsibility for the stairs maintenance lies with Mayor Todd Gloria.
Gloria spokeswoman Rachel Laing told KPBS that a city community engagement specialist reviewed the complaints. They determined that because the debris came from property along the stairs, it was actually the property owners who were responsible for the cleanup.
Zeidan and others dispute this. They say the city’s failure to keep drains from clogging caused the flood.
With her fence collapsing into the steps, Zeidan was told to reach out to FEMA. She said FEMA denied her assistance due to her fences and outdoor infrastructure not being “a part of her dwelling.”
The city also denied her claim a year later. She looked into repairing it on her own and was met with unaffordable prices.
“The quotes I got were upwards of $150,000. I was like, well, obviously, we can't just afford that. So, I need help to do that. Especially because it wasn't our fault, right?” Zeidan said. “It was all because this storm drain was clogged and all that water got rerouted through our house. It's been incredibly stressful.”
In late April, Pollard and other local leaders rallied neighbors to use Earth Day as an opportunity to clear debris. Marco Reina, who lives alongside the stairs, was among those who joined the clean-up.
“We, as just a little community here, we had to find a way. I was informed that if it overgrows again, someone else might come out and we might get billed. And obviously, we don't want that,” Reina said.
The future responsibility of the stairs is blurry.
Daniel Horton, Chief of Staff for District 4 Councilmember Henry Foster, maintained that Foster supported the Urban Collaborative Project’s efforts and the transformation of the stairs. Horton assigned a district representative to attend the clean-up.
“This Office remains committed to supporting this important project and its positive impact on our district,” Horton said.
Meanwhile, the members of the Urban Collaborative Project plan to continue gathering support and raising funds to keep the stairs available for the community to enjoy, rain or shine.
