Sign up below to get Mission Local’s free newsletter, a daily digest of news you won’t find elsewhere.
Help us reach 5,000 donors!
We have an ambitious goal for 2025: Double the total number of donors from last year to over 5,000! We are already 20 percent of the way there.
Become a donor today!
Supervisor Shamann Walton this week warned that if two firms responsible for a Bayview public housing complex do not address their residents’ accusations of neglect, there is a long road ahead of public hearings — and, if necessary, their removal.
In a statement on Tuesday, Walton’s office wrote that he will hold city hearings “on the mismanagement at Alice Griffith … until meaningful progress is made and residents’ concerns are fully addressed.” His legislative aide added on Thursday: “We have had property managers removed in the past.”
At a city hearing on Monday, the two firms — the John Stewart Company, the manager of Alice Griffith, and McCormack Baron Salazar, the developer — were accused by tenants at the Alice Griffith apartments, in Bayview near Candlestick Point, of vermin infestations, filth, broken elevators and ignoring their complaints of all of the above.
“When buildings do not have working alarms, that’s essential, that’s life saving,” said one commenter, speaking alongside half a dozen tenants and supporters on Monday. “When people don’t have elevators to get up and down the stairs … that’s serious. Someone who’s in a wheelchair should not have to crawl up to their unit, it doesn’t make sense.”
“Tenants are ignored and have continuously been ignored,” he added to scattered applause. “If you cannot balance your budget, get out of the business.”
Supervisor Walton, in a subsequent press release, said the alleged neglect was a failure of “accountability and basic human decency.”
Oversight of the Alice Griffith Apartments was handed off from the city to developer McCormack Baron Salazar when the apartments began redevelopment in 2010. In 2019, John Stewart Company was brought on to manage the property.
The redevelopment of the property, and its new management, modernized the building, adding benches and a courtyard. In 2019, the John Stewart Company said it increased management, janitorial and maintenance staff, and hired Bayview Senior Services as the on-site services coordinator.
This, Walton says, was an attempt to improve conditions at the housing complex —which he believes has failed.
In a statement, McCormack Baron Salazar said that delays in maintenance and emergency repairs have been exacerbated by the pandemic and budget challenges due to high levels of unpaid or overdue rent payments. The company added that it is actively pursuing funding for repairs.
Jennifer Wood, the vice president of John Stewart Company, said at Monday’s hearing that the company has not displaced a single tenant due to non-payment and, since the pandemic, when many families financially suffered, the property “simply does not bring in enough cash to cover all of its daily needs.”
Wood added that the company has applied for an emergency loan with the city, which the city approved in February. She is waiting on the approval of one last lender to underwrite elevator repair and cleaning services.
“This admission confirms what residents have long suspected,” wrote Walton, in his press release on Tuesday. “That their needs have been deprioritized in favor of cost-saving measures.”
Marie Visto, a disabled resident who appeared at the public hearing on Monday, has lived at the Alice Griffith apartments since 2017, after the building was redeveloped. Visto, confined to her wheelchair, said the power went out in her apartment for three days —in March, the elevators were shut down for two weeks.
Visto said she has asked for accommodation requests multiple times, and been ignored. She claims she has one outstanding accommodation request that is five years old; another is three years old.
Visto alleges the management company contacted her for assistance only once, last month.
“They have promised over the years, saying we’re going to check on you, we’re going to call you, we’re going to help you,” she said. “They never followed through until the elevators shut down for two weeks in March. Prior to that, they have done nothing to contact me, or other residents in my building who are disabled.”
Another disabled resident who lives on the fourth floor of the building submitted a letter to be read aloud to the board committee. The resident wrote that he had to slide down the stairs to leave his apartment after the elevator shut down; he had been confined for nine days.
Others complained of overflowing trash receptacles, rats and cockroaches running rampant, and a slow response to maintenance requests. A video shown to the board showed dozens of trash bags piled on top of one another, spilling out onto the ground.
Walton said neglect at Alice Griffith goes far beyond a lack of cleaning services. “This is not just about broken elevators or missed maintenance requests,” he said. “The residents at Alice Griffith deserve to live in safe, clean and dignified housing, and I will not stop until that becomes a reality.”
The Alice Griffiths complex is not the first public housing complex where tenants have complained of neglect: Since 2023, Mission Local has detailed allegations of rent scams, poor maintenance, illegal squatting, and generally dilapidated conditions at the Potrero Annex-Terrace at the hands of the Eugene Burger Management Corporation.
The firm failed city scorecards, and was replaced by the city after Walton and other supervisors held numerous hearings.
Walton said he will hold regular meetings with the residents of Alice Griffith, and is expecting the John Stewart Company to address tenants’ needs — whether they receive city funding or not.
“We are expecting a plan from John Stewart and we’ll be conducting regular check-ins with residents to make sure things are improving at the site,” said Natalie Gee, a legislative aide to Supervisor Walton.
