Building’s tenants fight rehab project
Longtime Housing Authority clients fear evictions after repairs
After decades of complaints from San Francisco public housing residents about their squalid living conditions — rampant mold and mildew, vermin infestations and elevators that break down for days at a time — the Housing Authority and city are finally embarking on making sweeping improvements.
But the problem for some tenants at a public housing project on Eddy Street is that they, too, will see their building undergo a major rehabilitation. Even though they don’t want it.
A tour of the project at 951 Eddy St. in the Western Addition turned up living conditions that are — wait for it — downright pleasant. Pleasant? The Housing Authority? Just what’s going on here?
“Everything is in good — not good, I would say excellent — condition,” said Arsina Rabichev, 88, who has lived in the building for 30 years and used to be the president of its tenants association.
“They’re just wasting $9 million and evicting senior tenants in the process.” Joseph Tobener, tenants rights lawyer representing the residents
As if on a totally different planet than the rest of the city’s public housing, 951 Eddy is a grand old Victorian complex featuring gorgeous floral carpeting, archways and columns with crown molding. A tour of several units showed them to be in good condition with perfect paint, nice carpet, good kitchens and adequate bathrooms. The ceilings are high, and some of the living rooms even have charming built-in hutches and shelves.
Many of the tenants — all seniors or disabled — have added their own flourishes, and their units sport intricate glass chandeliers and lace curtains.
So, of course, that just won’t do.
Relocating tenants
The coming major overhaul, which will cost $9.5 million and which many tenants say is unnecessary, will require some residents to vacate their units temporarily. Others will see their one-bedroom units “right-sized” to twobedrooms, for which they no longer qualify.
“They’re just wasting $9 million and evicting senior tenants in the process,” said Joseph Tobener, a tenants rights lawyer the seniors hired. “It’s the oldest story in the book. Somebody gets a grant and then spends it on nothing.”
(The seniors don’t actually face eviction, but some of them will have to move elsewhere during construction, and others will have to move to different units within the building after it’s done, a distinction Tobener says is “wordsmithing.”)
The history: After The Chronicle revealed major dysfunction at the Housing Authority in 2013, including federal inspections that ranked it one of the two worst public housing agencies in the state, Mayor Ed Lee pledged to remake “poverty housing.”
Last year, the mayor’s office and the Housing Authority won approval to participate in a new federal program to allow private affordable-housing developers to take over public housing properties as long as they upgrade them. The financial cost is offset by federal tax credits.
The complex at 951 Eddy will be taken over by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. this fall, and construction will begin soon thereafter. TNDC Executive Director Don Falk explained that the nonprofit needs to do the work now when the funding is available — and that there are more problems with the building than meet the eye.
The roof and elevator are old and need to be repaired, and the building has rat problems and several features that need to be fixed to meet federal disability standards, Falk said.
“It can look good cosmetically, but have a lot of problems behind the walls,” he said. “We really need a building that has good integrity to it.”
‘I cannot move’
But tenants aren’t buying it. Their building — a onetime apartment complex bequeathed by the landlord for senior housing upon his death — has already been extensively rehabbed twice after two big fires in 1995 and 2005.
Rabichev and other tenants moved out after both fires, lived elsewhere and moved back in — they don’t want to go through it again.
“I cannot move,” she said, saying she’s in the early stages of dementia and suffers from panic attacks. She has neighbors in their 90s who are deaf or blind and struggle to walk and they, too, are worried about their futures. They receive Social Security and pay 30 percent of it to the Housing Authority for their apartments.
During the preparation for the rehab work, it was discovered that Rabichev’s unit, a onebedroom, used to be two bedrooms before the various rehabs. Under federal U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations, the unit must be changed back to two bedrooms. And once it is, Rabichev will no longer qualify for it since her kids are grown and her husband is dead.
In June, tenants at the soon-to-be-remade properties received information from the Mayor’s Office of Housing stating, “The property where you currently live is in need of substantial repairs. The construction work to upgrade the building systems and your apartment will require you to move for a temporary period of time. It will not be safe for you to remain in your apartment during construction.”
That’s when the tenants went to Tobener — and when the story began to change. Now, the city and TNDC are looking at tenants’ individual cases and trying to make accommodations.
Kate Hartley, deputy director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing, said city officials have done extensive outreach to explain the process to tenants and reiterated that any moves are temporary.
“It’s been an imperfect process because some tenants choose not to participate, or they have a harder time than others because they’re aged or disabled,” she said. “We’re meeting with every household to assess their needs.”
Just a few households will have to move out, Falk pledged, and they will be assisted by TNDC staff to find an available unit and physically move. Tenants who agree to sign a waiver can even remain during the months while the elevator is out of operation, and staff will help those who are stuck in their units obtain groceries and medication.
“Most people who want to stay on-site can stay on-site,” he said. “We feel like we can bring a lot of compassion and still do this in a positive way.”
Moving to smaller unit
Falk said even Rabichev can remain in her unit while construction workers add a wall to the middle of her bedroom to turn it into two, although she will have to move to a smaller unit in the building once one is available or hire an inhome medical aide to qualify to stay in her apartment. (For the record, we saw her bedroom, and it looked normal size to us.)
After the rehab, about 10 tenants will be considered “over-housed,” meaning their units are too big for them, and they will have to relocate in the building. So there will be quite a lot of shuffling around.
“Occupied rehabs are hard on everybody,” Falk said. “They’re hard on the contractor, they’re hard on the tenants, they’re hard on the staff, and at the end of the day, everybody’s happy. People are going to have much better housing.”
Whether they want it or not.