SF Housing Agency Evicts Tenants as Demolition Looms

The City of San Francisco is evicting dozens of tenants from public housing in Potrero Hill where a corrupt apartment manager had charged them rent for apartments slated for demolition.

The eviction by the San Francisco Housing Authority beginning Sept. 3 is under challenge in court by tenants at the Potrero Terrace and Annex at 690 Texas Street, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The World War II-era collection of 61 two-story apartment buildings were supposed to stay vacant because they will be bulldozed as part of the city’s Hope SF redevelopment project.

The 38-acre property is managed for the city by Eugene Burger Property Management, based in Reno. At least 40 tenants have been served eviction lawsuits.

The tenants, who believed they were paying their rent, say Lance Whittenberg, who worked for Eugene Burger Property, charged them between $250 and $1,000 a month.

But rather than pass the payment along to the Housing Authority, he would pocket the money, according to residents and testimony at a San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting in May.

Whittenberg was fired early this year, after which no one has collected rent on the units, according to the Chronicle. The scam was originally reported by Mission Local.

Eugene Burger Property, hired by the Housing Authority to manage the 600-unit Potrero Terrace and Annex, is rushing to boot the remaining tenants. Three of the cases are headed for trial.

In May, the head of the Housing Authority and a representative from Eugene Burger Property said a lack of staff made it hard to ensure squatters didn’t move into vacant units.

“Unfortunately, regardless of the measures we used, we still find that individuals are still able to get into our units,” San Francisco Housing Authority CEO Tonia Lediju said. “Oftentimes when we re-board up units we ask individuals to move, but find them in other places on our site.”

This week, attorneys for a coalition of nonprofits that make up San Francisco’s Tenant Right to Counsel fired off a letter to Lediju demanding his agency stop the evictions.

The letter asks the Housing Authority to dismiss the pending lawsuits, vacate judgments already entered against the tenants, and meet with each household to help them get into other subsidized apartments.

It also asks that the tenants be allowed to remain in place until other housing is available.

“Our clients are asylum seekers, working families, elderly people and disabled children,” the attorneys state in the letter. “They have lived in Potrero Hill Terrace-Annex for years and paid rent to disgraced San Francisco Housing Authority property managers who promised safe and affordable housing and instead engaged in a conspiracy to defraud our clients.”

The flurry of evictions comes as San Francisco continues to implement its Hope SF program, which aims to replace World War II-era housing at four public housing developments — Alice Griffith, Hunter’s View, Sunnydale and Potrero Terrace & Annex.

When completed, Hope SF will replace 1,900 public housing units with 5,300 apartments, some slated to be market-rate. Of those, between 1,400 and 1,600 units are proposed at Potrero.

At Potrero, locally based Bridge Housing has completed a 72-unit apartment building. A 157-unit complex is expected to be completed next spring, with the remaining units to be built by 2034.

But while the new buildings are under construction, none of the old structures, which were built between 1941 and 1955, have been razed. Some 67 of the units are supposed to be vacant, while 77 are still occupied.

Demolition is expected to start next year, according to the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

— Dana Bartholomew