By Annika Hom :missionlocal – excerpt
Supervisor’s anger follows series of Mission Local articles revealing squatters, deferred work, and failing habitability scores in public housing
Supervisor Shamann Walton Thursday ripped into the property manager overseeing troubled Potrero Hill and Sunnydale public housing, criticizing its explanations for mismanaged properties.
At a meeting Thursday, the Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee grilled management corporation Eugene Burger for recent incidents, such as squatters living in vacant units, mounting trash, deferred work orders and poor habitability scores, and a lethal fire…
But Walton was unsatisfied with the majority of management’s answers.
“Now I understand where the problem lies,” Walton said, feigning sudden enlightenment. “We think quality of service for residents is different than what Eugene Burger thinks” it is, he said.
“Everybody who is in the development working on properties, developer, contractor, Housing Authority, HOPE SF — you are all responsible for meeting residents’ needs, point blank,” Walton said sternly…
Supervisor Catherine Stefani also questioned the city agreements that pay Eugene Burger to run the sites: “I don’t understand why we continue to engage and ask people to do the work if they are not able to perform it,” she said…(more)
The saddest part of this drama is that public housing could and should be a major part of the solution to our affordable housing crisis. With public housing, the City has control and the real estate speculation and profit-seeking aspect of housing development is absent. But public housing only works if City officials exercise their powers diligently and intelligently. We need a major overhaul of officialdom in City Hall.