On an especially breezy Thursday afternoon earlier this month, heavy winds knocked against the Alice Griffith Apartments, shutting down the power at the public housing complex redeveloped in 2017. That left Justice Robinson, a young resident, trapped inside an elevator for nearly 30 minutes.
The San Francisco Fire Department managed to pry Robinson out, but not without damaging the lift. Power returned, but it’s been eight days without the only elevator in the five-story building. And it will not be fixed until July 7, according to the John Stewart Company, which manages the building.
That’s too long for Stanley Lovelace, a 62-year-old disabled resident who lives on the fourth floor. He’s got issues with his knee, and walks with crutches. For the past two weeks, he’s slowly crutched up and down the narrow, steep staircase. It’s not easy.
“You sweat so much,” said Lovelace. “I remember one time I was so dizzy I thought I was going to pass out. I was sweating so much I could hardly see.”
Lovelace says he was offered a hotel voucher by management, but didn’t want to go. He lived in a budget hotel for four and a half months while management was getting his apartment ready, but had a “bad experience” and felt unsafe. “I should just be able to stay in my own home.”
Alice Griffith has a large population of senior and disabled residents, many of whom live on the fourth and fifth floors. The John Stewart Company said in a statement that they notified each resident of the elevator outage, made calls to residents with known disabilities, and offered “runner services” and $250 a night hotel vouchers for disabled residents.
Three households at the 93-unit building have taken them up on the offer of a hotel room.
One elderly man, who management says is not a resident, reportedly fell down the building’s stairs after being forced to use them.
The John Stewart company said a “technician shortage” means repairs take longer. Moreover, the firms said, new parts have to be ordered to repair the damaged elevator.
Lovelace says he and other residents were first told by the property manager that the elevator would be repaired in just a couple of days. But he was not surprised to learn it would take over two weeks — he’s seen problems with the elevators going back at least six years. “It’s never going to get better,” Lovelace said. “We’re locked inside all the time … It’s like a jail.”
In the past year, Alice Griffith has failed over 100 housing inspections done by the San Francisco Housing Authority. And that was just one of the buildings. The vast majority of the failures cited electrical issues and inoperable elevators.
Tenants say fixes to the building’s elevators and other seemingly simple repairs routinely take weeks, or aren’t addressed at all.
Alice Griffith was redeveloped as a part of the city’s HOPE-SF program, which aimed to transform dilapidated public housing projects into modernized, and towering, mixed-income units. A private firm, McCormack Baron Salazar, now owns the development, and hired the John Stewart Company as the manager in 2019.
Some tenants say they miss their old housing, and say that since redevelopment, repairs have been slower, and their housing conditions have been worse.
“It’s a lot going on here all the time,” said Lovelace as tenants sitting around him in the building’s front office shook their heads. “It’s just sad — we’re stressed out every day.”
Seems a case of champagne taste with not even a beer budget. If they are so unhappy with their subsidized accommodation, maybe they should fund their own better living conditions? Anything the government does is always inept and corrupt. Why should we feel sorry for the chronically needy? Just think of how nice our streets could be if we did not have to fund their private living expenses. They are not the only ones suffering because of their reliance on other humans to exist. San Francisco literally has the worst streets in the entire United States!
Residents need to reach out to Supervisor Shamann Walton right away.
Also, residents should form a tenants union if they don’t already have one. By SF law, a landlord must be compelled to meet with them upon request on any subject, from maintenance to rent prices.