By Eleni Balakrishnan : misisonlocal – excerpt
Following Mission Local reporting about under-the-table rent payments purportedly solicited by a rogue middle manager at a Potrero Hill public-housing complex, Supervisor Shamann Walton today blasted both the management company overseeing the site and the San Francisco Housing Authority.
“It has come to our attention that Eugene Burger staff illegally leased vacant units to members of community and charged them rent,” said Walton at a Board of Supervisors hearing today. The District 10 supervisor called today’s hearing about the “disturbing” allegations in his district last month. “As we know, this is completely unacceptable.”
The Eugene Burger Management Corporation oversees the Potrero Terrace and Potrero Annex sites on Potrero Hill, which are slated to be demolished and rebuilt into some 1,700 units of mixed-income housing. The company employed a senior site manager, Lance Whittenberg, who allegedly collected rent from squatters in the ever-growing number of vacant units on the property… (more)
This sounds very similar to the problems at that we hear about at Parkmerced. Properties falling into disrepair due to the lack of maintenance turning into empty units that are then filling up with “squatters”. Though in this case the squatters are not really squatting because they are paying. The funds are just not going through the system, and one assume they are not on the lottery system so they are accepting the low quality housing.
San Francisco cannot be so badly managed that whatever agency is in charge cannot manage these properties better than this. There seems to be another similarity between Parkmerced and this Potrero Hill public-housing complex. Both are slated to be demolished and rebuilt. One wonders if any of these units are going into the latest RHNA counts.
Perhaps the problem lies in the size of the projects. It is much more work and harder to keep track of large numbers of units. A better solution may be to set up smaller projects with a more manageable number of people and units to maintain. 50 or 70 is more manageable 500. One may actually know 50 people by name and have a more personal relationship with the community.
Grassroots Actions 