EVERYONE MATTERS! –
July 7, 2026 – The San Diego facility began as a cluster of houses in City Heights and has grown into a residential treatment center with 31 beds on Central Avenue, an outpatient facility, three sober living houses and short-term recovery services. When the center was founded, being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer was not widely accepted, making it difficult for the community to trust and access medical treatments and rehabilitation programs.
“It wasn’t very culturally competent at the time,” Sarafina Scapicchio, deputy executive director of Stepping Stone, said.
The vast majority of Stepping Stone’s clients are unhoused, Scapicchio said. Some patients are newly released from the San Diego County jail with nowhere to go or are referred to the facility by concerned family members. Others are there because they feel unsafe due to identity-based harassment at other facilities.
