A long time ago, an eventual colleague of mine at the Hearst-era San Francisco Examiner — who could be described as dumb as a box of hammers, but this would necessitate discussing the relative intellects of varying types of hammers — had a problem at work.
In this bygone era, information still traveled into newsrooms via tickertape. And this newspaperman simply couldn’t keep up with the flow of near-constant updates. So, he devised a solution: He turned off the newsroom tickertape machine.
For a brief, halcyon period, outside problems continued and even proliferated, but the newsroom remained remarkably peaceful. Presently, in a potentially far more destructive way, the city of San Francisco is doing the same thing.
Last week, the Planning Commission approved proposed legislation from Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman that would do away with fees and fines for people living in homes in which shoddy work, or perhaps worse, was carried out by disgraced engineer and permit expediter Rodrigo Santos, and/or approved by corrupt senior building inspector Bernie Curran.
Both Santos and Curran went to prison as part of a federal probe into malfeasance at the Department of Building Inspection; the two were involved in a bribery scheme. It makes sense for the city not to doubly penalize homeowners who’ve been victimized by crap construction and/or dubious approvals of it by also punishing them with costly penalties, especially if the work in question was undertaken by prior owners.
What does not make sense is the way that the city has chosen to go about this. It has artificially circumscribed the number of people eligible for amnesty while also failing to shine a light on the true extent of the lying and cheating that went on with the Department of Building Inspection’s tacit approval and even active cooperation.
The city is, in short, turning off the tickertape machine.
Only a fraction of Curran/Santos properties were inspected by DBI
15,281 properties were
tied to Rodrigo Santos
or Bernie Curran
Out of those, only 5,445
properties were listed
in DBI’s audit
Not listed in audit
Only 140 properties
were physically
inspected
Not inspected
Listed in audit
15,281 properties were
tied to Rodrigo Santos
or Bernie Curran
Out of those, only
5,445 properties
were listed in DBI’s
audit
Not listed in audit
Not inspected
Listed in audit
Only 140 properties
were physically
inspected
Chart by Kelly Waldron. Source: The Department of Building and Inspection.
Underlying the Santos/Curran amnesty legislation is a years-in-the-making Department of Building Inspection audit of properties either man — or, especially, both of them — worked on. For all their other faults, both Santos and Curran possessed an abundant work ethic: The DBI audit underpinning the Santos/Curran amnesty legislation included some 5,445 properties. But DBI personnel ended up physically inspecting only 140 of them, and issued just 134 Notices of Violation — not quite 3 percent.
These numbers are unbelievable — as in, I don’t believe them. But the bigger issue here is that DBI vastly limited the scope of the audit by only including some 3,000 Curran properties instead of the full 12,739 he inspected during his lengthy city career.
Did an (accused) federal criminal work on your home? Check our map.
Map by Will Jarrett. Data from the Department of Building Inspection.
Only properties in which Curran performed an unscheduled same-day inspection, always a red flag that skullduggery is afoot, were included in this audit.
Curran, however, went to federal prison because of his corruption. He was, for perhaps a decade, the Steph Curry of a corrupt department. While he was perfectly capable of doing skullduggery on a same-day unscheduled inspection, he absolutely had the skillset to skulldugger when he routinely went out-of-district to do an inspection (not on the audit), or when he did any routine inspection (not on the audit).
Curran thrived and was promoted within DBI to the role of senior inspector; current director Patrick O’Riordan was, for many years, his direct supervisor, who signed off on his time cards.
Curran’s leadership role imparted him with the ability to do a lot more than make trouble with unscheduled inspections. He could make trouble with scheduled inspections. He could sign off on inspections when he never traveled to the sites; Curran purportedly laughed about this with his colleagues (the GPS data for his city-issued car would be helpful here, if anyone cared to review it). On top of his own (dubious) work, he could also dispatch the inspectors he supervised to do inspections.
Curran even threw his weight around with inspectors he wasn’t supervising. Close readers may recall an earlier Mission Local article noting a DBI senior inspector pressuring an inspector, whom he did not oversee, to blow off doing rebar inspections on seismic retrofits and instead schmooze at a holiday party attended by the very builders and developers whose work he’d be inspecting.
Well, that senior inspector was Bernie Curran. At the time, in a stage whisper audible to anyone who cared to listen, Curran purportedly dismissed these inspections on seismic upgrades by saying “rebar, shmeebar.”
The city well and truly ought to doubly scour every mandatory retrofit job tied Santos and/or Curran as a matter of course.
As it stands, there are, literally, thousands of Curran-inspected properties where strange and terrible things could be underfoot or in the walls. Again, these were purposefully excluded from the audit (and DBI only personally visited 140 of the 5,445 properties it did include).
It’s hard to understand why DBI was the agency tasked with undertaking an audit of the failures of DBI; it is perversely incentivized. As it is, the audit really is akin to the algorithm underpinning this whole endeavor. And, right now, it feels a bit like the AI program insisting there are only two r’s in “strawberry.”
In other words: Audit, shmaudit.
If ever there was a poster couple for the city’s need to provide amnesty to the victims of the bad actors it enabled and employed, it would be Aleksandra Kenar and Andreu Osika.
The pair, profiled in a deeply reported piece by the Chronicle’s St. John Barned-Smith, are facing perhaps a seven-figure construction bill to undo serious problems in a home they bought that had been worked on by the Santos/Curran one-two punch.
It makes perfect sense that people in Kenar and Osika’s position shouldn’t be punished for construction and inspection problems they had no way to know about, but which the city did indeed have ways to know about. Their attorney, Emily Brough, says that waiving additional penalties will certainly help her clients. But only so much. This could save them thousands of dollars, but they’re on the hook for hundreds of thousands, if not more than $1 million.
“It’s a token of what they lost,” Brough says. “It’ll be a small part of their monetary losses, not to mention the toll it’s taken on them and their health and family.”
The city attorney is insisting Kenar and Osika do not have recourse to sue San Francisco. Their attorney — surprise, surprise, surprise — does not agree.
It’s also not clear how many of the people swept up in the audit’s 134 Notices of Violation are as blameless as Kenar and Osika. Some 99 of those 134 complaints have not been fully investigated by DBI, so we just don’t know.
There is, at present, not even an audit report, and yet we’re moving ahead with this amnesty program. Mandelman hopes to have it ratified by the Board of Supervisors by June and signed by Mayor Daniel Lurie before the supes’ August recess.
So, that may well happen. And it may extend a modicum of relief for people like Kenar and Osika (and, potentially, others whose tales are less sympathetic). But there’s a lot of tickertape remaining out there. The city has chosen not to read it.
An excellent explanation of the issues at hand.
Property owners that have been hurt by the City’s/DBI’s malfeasance should definitely be allowed to sue for damages.
Chiu has been corrupt for decades, they should just ignore and sue anyway.
Eff Chiu.
One unclear thing in this article. Are you saying that, of the 140 properties DBI could be bothered to inspect, 134 of them were in violation? As in 96% of that small sampling of affected properties required remedy?
Sir —
My understanding is that, of 294 flagged properties, 175 were determined to need physical inspections. Of those 175, 135 (one more in the period between the story and now) have been given NOVs. More could be forthcoming.
JE
Shouldn’t we just merge Planning & Buildings, to avoid people being caught up in (typically costly) skirmishes between them?
Or just run them competently and ethically, even oversee them maybe?
All I can say is thank GOD we got rid of London Breed. Lurie’s got a window to show something of himself with his self-lauded “business know-how” and talk of accountability – he should be leading the charge to investigate and remunerate those affected by the City’s agents’ frauds. He should be all about it. Crickets!?
“The legal recourse for any property owners who bought properties with unpermitted work is to bring a lawsuit against those who sold them the properties, contracted with Mr. Santos, or bribed Mr. Curran,” Jen Kwart, a spokesperson for the city attorney’s office, said in an emailed statement. “The City did not benefit from the actions of Mr. Santos, Mr. Curran, and those who hired them. In fact, the City was also defrauded.”
YOU HIRED AND “SUPERVISED” THEM AND GAVE THEM LEGAL POWERS.
YES, JEN KWART, YOU THE CITY SCREWED UP ALSO. YOU ARE LIABLE TOO.
You and Chiu can put your hands over your eyes and play blind justice all you like because frankly we expect that type of charade from SF.gov now. It’s the same SF.gov that was supposedly overseeing the DPW/DBI frauds the ENTIRE TIME!
Put a sock in it Kwart, we’re not buying your excuses anymore.
Great article Joe, you nailed it when you mentioned that DBI is investigating itself about the biggest scandal to hit the department in decades or maybe ever.
And how is DBI investigating itself?
Bernie was a manager and the people who facilitated his actions were also managers and they all have been promoted to even higher positions. And the so called “reforms” at the department only target the line staff. Not the management.
This audit is like everything DBI does “smoke and mirrors “ and the supervisors are gobbling it up. Maybe to try and impress Lurie?
“And how is DBI investigating itself?” Exactly. And we can’t trust City Hall either.
The “City Family” takes care of it’s own.
Thanks for this story! My heart goes out to affected homeowners
Here’s another case we rarely hear about for some mysterious reason. Some 2,500 residential apartment buildings are years past deadline for earthquake retrofits under SF’s Mandatory Soft Story Program. In large quakes, this type of building commonly pancakes. Most tenants living in such buildings don’t even know about the problem.
How could this have happened? If we had The Big One today, how many lives could be lost?
Just because Bernie or Rodbigo were involved in a project on someone’s property doesn’t mean there has to be something wrong with it. Might very well be but are you suggesting people open up their homes and properties to inspectors after the fact? What if they’ve upgraded their bathroom without permits in the meantime? How about added an in-law? I’d say 80% of homes in the Sunset have illegal in-law units. That’s not only trouble for the DBI but regular people just trying to get by. How about we start with your property Joe? I’m sure it’s completely up to code with no work without permits. If it is it would be a miracle.
Gigi —
“Let’s ignore the work by the guys who went to prison and instead look at the home of the journalist writing the story” is really a crassly stupid thing to think, write, and hit “print” on.
Come on already.
JE
I am one of the people affected and slapped with an NOV. Note that I am the 3rd owner since the Curran sign off. Yet DBI wants ME to pay for THEIR Crocker scheme.
What neither you nor St John have been pointing out that there is only a moratorium on those NOVs which will immediately get triggered again as soon as you apply for any kind of a permit. Meaning that DBI will make itself whole eventually while homeowners have to bleed regardless of being guilty or not.
I bought a house with a clean paper trail. That should be the end of it. It’s a disgusting level of extortion and criminality and no matter how loud you rattle the cage nobody is listening or reporting the facts
you are questioning why every project is not “audited” ; errr . . . how do you go back and audit a rebar inspection? the rebar is encased in concrete and further buried under a slab. The system is designed so that the Engineer of Record (EOR) or the outside special inspection agency checks the details and signs off on structural work. Per state law the EOR or Special Inspector, not the city inspector, are the party that have legal and financial responsibility. The city inspector is really just there to make sure that the outside inspector initialled the job card and do a very general spotcheck or the drawings and selected areas on site. Should city inspectors do “drive-by” inspections? No. Going back and to open thousands of records of for the purpose of satisfying those who want heads on a pike does nothing to ensure life safety and is a colossal waste of resources.
They found violations in 3% of the properties they did a plan check review of. They found violations in 96% of the properties they actually physically inspected.
The reason the City is passing these “amnesties” is an attempt to sweep these numbers under the rug. What we have is a situation where it’s very likely that between 5,000 and 12,000 properties are structurally deficient in some manner (could be seismic, could be electrical, could be plumbing). That’s a huge potential liability that the City caused, not only to the properties themselves but, potentially, to neighboring properties. The City is setting themselves up for a big time judgment should something happen to these properties.
Love the use of the word “skullduggery”. Great article Joe. Keep the heat on these criminals.