Wes Craven said he got the idea for this film from some newspaper clippings from the Santa Monica Evening Outlook in 1978.

He was quoted saying:

"People Under the Stairs was based on a story that happened in Santa Monica. There was this couple of upstanding citizens but were away at work and the police came to find this place broken into and found a place in the house that was barricaded. They broke down the doors and discovered these three kids that had never been outside. Dressed in rags, they couldn't speak English."

The children were found as a result of neighbors reporting to the police that they had seen people breaking into the house. As Wes Craven seemed to remember it, the perpetrators were allegedly black.

Does anyone remember anything about the actual incident? He could have made it up for all I know or significantly misremembered the details.