No quick fix for S.F. public housing S.F. PUBLIC HOUSING Tenants are frustrated by long waits for maintenance and repairs

Carla Hamilton (left) helps Rosalba Penaloza wash her son's hands at Starr King elementary school in S.F.'s Potrero neighborhood. Penaloza lives in Potrero Terrace public housing with her son, who is autistic, and her daughter. less Carla Hamilton (left) helps Rosalba Penaloza wash her son's hands at Starr King elementary school in S.F.'s Potrero neighborhood. Penaloza lives in Potrero Terrace public housing with her son, who is autistic, ... more Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close No quick fix for S.F. public housing 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

Three bottles of Liquid Plumr, paid for at her own expense, didn't help. Neither did two months of phone calls to the San Francisco Housing Authority. Mendel Pratt's bathtub remained filled nearly to the brim with brown, murky water - and nobody seemed to care.

"I called somebody again on Friday, but they haven't come," she sighed, noting on a January morning that she hadn't been able to take a proper bath or shower since November. "I have to wash up in the sink."

Rust spread from the base of her toilet and across the moldy tiles of her bathroom. The flow of water out of her kitchen sink had slowed to a trickle.

Pratt struggles to walk after an accident left her with six screws and a steel plate in her leg. And she and other tenants at Clementina Towers - a 13-story public housing complex for seniors and disabled people, many of whom are in wheelchairs - constantly face elevators that are broken, sometimes for days at a time.

Pratt is not alone in her frustration with her landlord, the Housing Authority. Residents who live in public housing told The Chronicle they constantly deal with violence, units infested with roaches and mice, heating that doesn't work and major mold and mildew problems.

Funding, leadership at the Housing Authority and the system set up to deal with maintenance problems are all factors. Finding a solution won't be easy, and Mayor Ed Lee has requested an overhaul of the agency. He says he wants to make the Housing Authority - and its thousands of residents in 6,476 units at 45 public housing projects - more of a priority.

Many entrenched problems at the Housing Authority have come to light after a series of Chronicle stories on its director, Henry Alvarez, who faces: three lawsuits filed against him by employees accusing him of discrimination and retaliation; a federal inspection placing the agency on the "troubled" list for poor finances and management; and allegations he illegally steered contracts to friends and political allies. Alvarez is on medical leave.

Dozens of agency employees began complaining to the mayor's office last spring that poor leadership at the agency was contributing to residents, who pay a third of their income in rent, going for weeks or months without basic repairs to their units being completed.

It's a concern shared by several tenants at Clementina Towers, tucked among some of South of Market's priciest hotels and condos.

"Ever since I've lived here, every other week one or both elevators has gone out," said Terry Bagby, 54, who has lived there for five years and suffers from herniated discs, sciatica, depression and anxiety, "which is getting worse by the day living here."

When the elevators do work, they lurch so badly riders have felt sick to their stomachs. Bagby said he often sees blood, vomit or feces in the elevators, and it stays there for days.

"We all live under the poverty line here," Bagby said. "We don't have enough money to live better, but that's no excuse to be living like we are here. We're not living in a Third World country."

Bagby has frequently taken his complaints to Housing Authority Commission meetings where, he said, his gripes seem to fall on deaf ears. Suresa Tauai, the property manager at Clementina Towers for the past four years, said she received an e-mail from her supervisor a few months ago reading, "Tell your tenants to stop going to commission meetings."

Finding solutions

Lee, who at first claimed to not know about the issues at the Housing Authority, relieved all but one member of the Housing Authority Commission of their duties earlier this month and recently appointed City Administrator Naomi Kelly to lead a team to devise a plan to remake the agency with recommendations due by July 1.

"Everything's on the table - from the agency becoming a city department to a public/private relationship with nonprofits," Kelly said.

She recently toured Plaza East, a public housing project in the Western Addition, and plans to tour many more in the coming months. She said she's examining the work-order system to get maintenance requests responded to more quickly and may bring in the Department of Public Works and the Department of Building Inspection to help clear the backlog.

But she said it's already clear that federal funding just isn't enough.

"There's always room for improvement, but it's about the money," she said.

The agency's annual operating budget is $211.5 million, and it spends $7.6 million each year on 220 maintenance employees and $2.6 million on materials and supplies for maintaining public housing units.

Rose Dennis, spokeswoman for the Housing Authority, said funding levels have remained about the same for the past few years but that the money is not going as far as the cost of supplies increases and the decrepit public housing stock sinks deeper into disrepair.

She said the agency makes every effort to respond immediately to emergencies like broken elevators and within 72 hours for less serious maintenance concerns.

"I understand that people do get frustrated," Dennis said. "The bottom line is we do everything we can to accommodate the people that we serve."

Union rules about which laborers can perform which tasks also can slow the process. There are 10 unions that contract with the Housing Authority, but there is no such position as a handyman who can unclog a toilet and change a light bulb. Instead, that takes visits from a plumber and an electrician.

Waiting for answers

Miki Pryor, 68, is a retired schoolteacher. She's lived at her senior and disabled housing development at 1880 Pine St. for six years. She's used to waiting years for problems to be fixed.

She said it took five years to fix a closet door off its track. It also took five years to fix a leak in her hallway, and she had to put pots and pans under it for that long to avoid soaking the floor.

She once went without heat for 3 1/2 months and without hot water for six weeks. One of the burners on her stove is out. She said the Housing Authority promised to fix it - two years ago.

Beverly Saba, 73, is the elected tenant representative for senior and disabled residents and lives in a high-rise in the Tenderloin called Sala Burton Manor. ("We sound like a spa," she said. "We're not.")

She said it does take a long time to get repairs done - and that broken elevators are a chronic concern - but she thinks the leadership at the Housing Authority has gotten a "horrible rap."

"They've done a lot of making gold out of straw, but there comes a point where that can no longer happen," she said. "The funding is too decreased to let that happen anymore. ... This is far better than an SRO, and it's far better than living on the streets."

It's a more charitable view than that held by many public housing tenants in the southeast corner of the city who face pervasive violence in addition to maintenance problems.

Finding a safe place

Rosalba Penaloza has lived in the decrepit, dangerous Potrero Terrace atop Potrero Hill for three years. The 36-year-old widow and mother of two lives on Social Security payments that she receives for her autistic son, Jose, and money she can scrape together cleaning houses and babysitting.

She barely notices the blinds over her windows that have holes in them; she has to force them to go up or down on their string. The sagging ceiling with peeling paint caused from a leak upstairs is no big deal either.

What bothers Penaloza is that she desperately needs help for 5-year-old Jose but can't find anybody to visit her home because of the violence.

As a 2-year-old, Jose - a smiley, chubby boy with locks of chestnut hair - could address his family members by name and say "adios," but he soon lost all his words and no longer speaks. At first, Penaloza received nursing and respite care through nonprofits.

"They got scared, and they stopped coming," she said in Spanish using an interpreter. She has called for replacements. "When they ask, 'Where do you live?' (and I tell them) they immediately say no."

Her home and her neighbors' home have been broken into. She applied for a transfer to another public housing development, but none of the options were any safer. She requested a transfer again in September. She has yet to hear anything.

She said she hears gunshots at least once a month and moved her 14-year-old daughter's bed away from a window to the other side of the room in the hope of avoiding stray bullets.

"It becomes so normal, you get used to it," she said of the violence. "But it's still scary."

Dennis, the spokeswoman for the Housing Authority, said public safety is a major concern and that the agency pays the San Francisco Police Department an extra $2.3 million a year to provide additional police presence at the most dangerous developments.

Karla Ramos, a case manager at the Homeless Prenatal Program, has been trying to help Penaloza transfer to a different public housing development for the past year. It took Ramos nine years of advocating for her own family's transfer out of Potrero Hill and into a unit in Hayes Valley, which finally came to fruition last year.

"They're very negligent, so unprofessional," Ramos said of Housing Authority staff. "If you go to their office, they come up with big attitudes. I always ask where they get these people."

One thing seems to get employees' attention: media scrutiny. A few days after The Chronicle visited Clementina Towers, Mendel Pratt's bathtub was finally unclogged.