San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/series/public-housing-in-private-hands)
The Public Press is focusing on the most vulnerable renters in the nation’s most expensive housing markets.
Yesica Prado / San Francisco Public Press
A private developer proposes that Plaza East Apartments in San Francisco, built less than 20 years ago, be demolished and rebuilt. Tenants want to see a plan for repairs to existing homes.
“Public Housing in Private Hands” is a series that explores poor living conditions in government-run and other subsidized housing, examining the decisions of both public officials and developers. Stories also examine the limits of local and state eviction moratoriums designed to help those in economic need in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Ongoing coverage by staff writer Madison Alvarado. The initial series included reporters Nina Sparling and Madison Alvarado, data journalist Frank Bass, infographics intern Jenny Kwon and research assistants Ande Richards and Imran Ali Malik, who are students at UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program.
Support for this series was provided by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Thanks also to the Investigative Editing Corps, which helped launch this series in 2020.
Madison Alvarado San Francisco started privatizing 29 public housing buildings in the wake of city scandals years ago. Even after $800 million worth of repairs, residents complain about living conditions, combative private management companies and eviction threats.
Madison Alvarado One year after emergency repairs were supposed to be completed at Plaza East, 39 units are still waiting on fixes. Meanwhile, in late May, the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development gave the complex a failing score of 40 out of 100 following physical inspection.
Madison Alvarado How did the Plaza East public housing development, built just two decades ago, fall into disrepair in such a short time? Nobody involved in the project has been able to explain how things got so bad at Plaza East, but there’s plenty of blame to go around.
Madison Alvarado Six months after San Francisco agreed to lend the developer of a run-down Western Addition public housing complex $2.7 million for emergency repairs, the work is behind schedule and many residents at Plaza East Apartments say their units remain damaged by mold, leaks and pest infestations — even after repairs were done.
Rent collections by San Francisco’s public housing agency fell precipitously in late 2019 and have continued to decline to less than half of what is owed, according to a San Francisco Public Press analysis — but the agency can’t explain why.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development denied an application to raze and rebuild Plaza East Apartments, a 20-year-old public housing complex in the Western Addition, the agency confirmed.
The determination was made on March 30 but not publicly disclosed until Tuesday, when HUD officials were questioned by the Public Press. The move comes three months after the San Francisco Housing Authority submitted a demolition application, with Mayor London Breed’s endorsement.
Federal officials are considering a proposal to allow a developer to tear down and rebuild a 20-year-old public housing complex in the Western Addition — a plan that does not address residents’ demands for repairs to health and safety issues in the current structures.
After an eight-month pause, court-ordered evictions in San Francisco have resumed, and they’re coming down hardest on some of the city’s most vulnerable residents. The Sheriff’s Department has conducted evictions at 33 addresses across the city since November 2020, according to documents obtained through a California Public Records Act request. More than half — 18 — involved tenants in permanent supportive housing.
Landlords have tried to force hundreds of San Francisco renters from their homes during the coronavirus pandemic. From March 1 to Dec. 31, 2020, landlords filed close to half the number of eviction notices as in the same period a year earlier, even as state and federal moratoriums on pandemic-related evictions remain in effect.
As the pandemic stretches into its second year, an estimated 278,000 households, or roughly one-quarter of the Bay Area’s 1.1 million renters, have little or no confidence they will be able to make next month’s rent, according to a San Francisco Public Press analysis of Census Bureau data. An estimated 60,000 renters living in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo and San Francisco counties who were behind on their rent in mid-December said they feared eviction in the next 60 days.
