San Francisco Public Housing Braces for HUD Housecleaning

SAN FRANCISCO —  Ruby Evans doesn’t mind living in a four-bedroom apartment with two other adults and seven children.

It’s the torn linoleum, peeling wallpaper, graffiti-marred windows, urine-soaked porch, and the rats and armies of cockroaches that she can’t stand.

A Housing Authority maintenance crew sprinkled some cockroach poison in her kitchen.

“The roach, he just shook his head and walked right over it,” said Evans, 57.

“I live here because I have nowhere else to go,” she said. “If I had any way of getting out, I’d move today.”

Evans’ situation at Alice Griffith housing complex is familiar to many of the city’s 30,000 public housing tenants, according to a scathing federal audit of the San Francisco Housing Authority.

The audit, done at the request of Mayor Willie Brown, found that, essentially, the Housing Authority should be condemned.

Brown moved swiftly to clean house. He asked for--and received--the resignation of the Housing Authority’s executive director, Shirley Thornton, and the seven commissioners.

At the commission’s final meeting, Brown said he was not blaming individuals for the agency’s problems.

“But the long years of issue after issue unresponded to had shattered the confidence of [federal officials] . . . the safety, security, comfort of the tenants has been so jeopardized that there is only one way to deal with this situation, and that is for HUD to assume leadership,” Brown said.

“Nothing is ever easy. But it has to be done,” he said. “If the place is rotten, no matter who’s in there, you would have had to have them removed in order to clean it up.”

The agency has had chronic mismanagement, which has led to deplorable and unsafe living conditions in its 12,000 public housing units, the 13-page report says.

“The SFHA may be in worse condition than originally suspected,” reads the opening line in the audit by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“Many portions of some of these structures have suffered substantial deterioration as a result of age, heavy use, poor housekeeping, inadequate maintenance and rehabilitation,” the report said.

Many buildings contain lead-based paint and asbestos, about $500,000 in rents goes uncollected each year, and some buildings lack access for disabled people, the review said.

The Housing Authority, which has an annual budget of $39 million, has said that it needs $385 million to improve public housing.

The main obstacle to recovery, the report said, was the “lack of competent and clear direction, guidance, policymaking” by the commission and “lack of competent leadership” on the part of Thornton.

Under Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros, several municipal housing agencies, including those in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and New Orleans, have been taken over or requested federal help.

Although this is the first time that HUD has taken the reins in San Francisco, there were indications as far back as 1980 that problems were on the horizon. HUD first deemed the agency troubled in 1980. That designation wasn’t removed until 12 years later. But 18 federal recommendations for improvement issued in 1992 are still pending.

HUD has agreed to help San Francisco for about 18 months, including controlling the agency for the next six months.

Meantime, most plans for renovations and rebuilding appear to be on schedule. At least four complexes, recipients of federal Hope VI funds, are scheduled for demolition this year. They will be replaced with townhouse-style units.

Some residents seemed skeptical about the shake-up downtown, saying they’ve heard the same rhetoric before--change and improvement--but things keep getting worse.

They say that previous mayors have done little to curb violence, that maintenance crews are scarce, and that their concerns fall on deaf ears. At least one housing complex has earned the nickname, “The Black Hole.”

“Well, maybe [the mayor] is actually going to do something for us this time,” said Cynthia Evans, a mother of two. “At least he’s pretending like he’s making an effort.”

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Housing Woes

Some of the problems detailed in a 13-page U.S. Housing and Urban Development report on an audit of the San Francisco Housing Authority:

* Patterns of mismanagement continue because the executive director has consulted heavily with a former director, who was fired for incompetence.

* Tenant concerns have gone unanswered.

* Long delays in maintenance.

* Poor security.

* About $500,000 in rents a year goes uncollected.

* Eighteen federal recommendations for improvement issued in 1992 are still pending.

* A conflict of interest for Commissioner Larry Lee, who is the business agent for the plumbers union, which provides some maintenance for the agency.

* The agency’s $12-million reserve may be overstated.

* Tenant certification is 15 months behind.

* Some staff didn’t know how to use the computer system.

* Some buildings contain lead-based paint and asbestos.

* Some buildings lack access for the disabled.