Residents at 1101 Connecticut, the first completed building in a massive rebuild of the Potrero Hill public housing complex, said during a community meeting this week that BRIDGE Housing is mismanaging the site.
In fact, they say there is no management; the site has had no property manager for months. As a result, they said, issues abound: A long-broken garage door allows for non-residents to enter the property freely, security guards allow unsafe conditions to go unchecked, and plumbing issues and broken appliances remain unfixed.
Residents only began moving in five years ago to the brand-new, 72-unit building, the first installation in HOPE SF’s rebuild of the aging Potrero Terrace and Potrero Annex, a sprawling 38-acre public housing complex across the street that was built in the 1940s and ’50s. Mission Local has reported on that site’s ongoing troubles with squatters, dilapidated buildings, and neglect by management.
But longtime residents who hoped to leave behind the litany of issues they faced at the Potrero Terrace and Annex under the troubled Eugene Burger Management Corporation have found that new buildings and new management have made little difference.
“Just because we’re in a new building doesn’t mean that the building is being properly cared for, or that management is complying with all of the protocols that by record it’s supposed to,” said Tenika Blue, a resident who moved from the older Potrero Terrace into 1101 Connecticut in 2022, and helped organize Thursday’s gathering. “New buildings are going up, [but] if they’re already mismanaging this property, is this going to be the case for our existing neighbors that are coming in?”
Five BRIDGE Housing employees showed up, four of them from out of town. About 35 came to air their grievances.
Bryan Casey, the regional property supervisor who joined the company in mid-May, told residents Thursday evening that he would be overseeing the 1101 Connecticut site until a manager was ready to move in. One has already been hired, Casey said, but has no start date set.
“Are one of y’all going to sit in that office until you all actually get a property manager?” asked Shervon Hunter, a nearby Potrero Hill resident who runs the nonprofit Stand in Peace, Inc. “No one’s sitting in that office at 9 o’clock on a Wednesday.”
There was no answer.
One resident, Katherine, said she wished she hadn’t moved into the new building. She was moved into a unit that was previously the site of a fire, with various unresolved issues that still remain, including a hole in her wall. She said her bathtub is “disgusting,” but she has not received the new tub she was promised.
“This should have been fixed before I moved in,” said Katherine, who moved to 1101 Connecticut from the older buildings at the Potrero Annex. “I wish I could go back to 71 Watchman Way. I’d rather deal with the dope fiends over there.”
Another resident said broken windows on the fifth floor went unfixed for a year, allowing rain into the building, before it was finally fixed this month.
Without any management, and an emergency call line that often goes unanswered, residents have struggled to find anyone to consult about issues. So Blue and three other residents decided to host Thursday night’s meeting, inviting upper-level BRIDGE Housing employees to hear them out. They called themselves a council, and asked for BRIDGE to provide them with training so they could begin handling resident issues on their own.
One woman said she, like other residents, keeps security cameras on her apartment, but never sees any security guard patrolling the halls. And the broken gate that allows any non-residents to enter is alarming to her, especially because she has a restraining order against someone.
“With that gate being open, and people having the freedom to go inside the building, that scares me,” she said, adding that she has recently had trouble sleeping when she hears noises in the building or sees strangers smoking in the stairwells. “I should feel safe inside my building where I pay rent.”
Most of the employees present on Thursday were newly hired, and appeared to know nothing about ongoing problems. And it’s unclear why there is no site manager at 1101 Connecticut.
Eric Brown, the senior vice president of communications and policy for BRIDGE Housing, told Mission Local on Thursday after the meeting that he did not know why there was no site manager hired, as he had just joined the company two months ago.
And at a Board of Supervisors hearing into issues on Potrero Hill last week, BRIDGE Housing’s Executive Vice President of Development in Northern California and Portland, Smitha Seshadri, said a resident manager was indeed at the site.
However, when pressed by Supervisor Shamann Walton, who recounted having to appear at the site on a Sunday after a major leak because management was unavailable, Seshadri wavered on that claim.
“I cannot speak [to] if we have a resident manager on site right now… I can get back to you,” Seshadri said.
The offices designated for management, residents said, sit locked and empty. Packages pile up inside, with no one available to open the door and distribute them to waiting residents. When contractors arrive to work at the site, there is often no one there to let them onto the premises.
“The light is on, but ain’t nobody home,” said Hunter, looking into the office after the meeting.
BRIDGE Housing representatives took notes and promised residents that they would be addressing their problems, but that remains to be seen.
One of the employees, Susan Neufeld Paul, has been with BRIDGE for 13 years, and a former resident noted: “That’s a very long time to be in there … so how many years do they have to keep going and going and going through [this]?”
Brown, for his part, called the meeting “a new starting point” for BRIDGE Housing.
“From this day on you can hold me, Susan, Bryan, and Vanessa accountable for anything that’s not being done, or needs to be done,” Brown said, promising to be present on the site from where he lives in L.A. “If things are not moving in a positive direction next week, the week after … feel free to reach out.”
Shameful that this b allowed to happen. Just who is in charge and to be held accountable in case anything should happen to property or its residence. I show new apartments go up SanFrancisco and 10 years later they looks like slum properties. Shameful.
Which one of the many city commissions is supposed to handle these matters? If the city is going to be in the affordable housing ownership business, there must be some department responsible for managing the properties. Or do as the tenants suggest and hire one of them to manage the property. Encouraging responsibility and offering ownership options is not a bad way to manage property.