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Wow we are a socialist country.
This Housing Authority in San Francisco operates 6,476 units of low-income housing at 45 public housing projects. It is one of 114 housing authorities in California. The city of San Francisco only has a population of about 800,000 people. That compares to Mesa, which has a population of around 500,000. The San Francisco Bay area which includes Oakland and San Jose has a population of about 7.5 million compared to the metro Phoenix population of 4.5 million. S.F. housing agency scores low in audit Heather Knight Updated 11:03 pm, Wednesday, January 9, 2013 The San Francisco Housing Authority is a troubled agency with dire financial problems and major management flaws, according to a new audit from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Officials with HUD have been at the agency's headquarters all week and are expected to be on site for two months reviewing financial documents and conducting interviews with staff to help the agency craft a recovery plan after its most recent audit, finalized last month, gave the Housing Authority a score of 54 out of 100. Any score below 60 puts the agency on the "troubled" list, making it ineligible to apply for competitive grants and meaning it must right itself to avoid penalties, including being placed in receivership. California has 114 housing authorities, but just one other - in Richmond - is on the troubled list, said Gene Gibson, spokeswoman for the regional office of HUD. San Francisco hasn't been on the list since 2003, she said. The dismal score comes as the agency's director, Henry Alvarez, faces three lawsuits from employees for discrimination and retaliation, and complaints from dozens more staffers that he is an intimidating bully. His backers, including Mayor Ed Lee, have maintained that Alvarez deserves praise for putting the agency on solid financial footing, but the new score of 54 contradicts those claims. "Compare that to the grade of your child on a test," said Sara Shortt, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Rights Committee, which advocates for low-income tenants. "That's an unacceptably low score, especially because what it translates into is more than academic." The Housing Authority operates 6,476 units of low-income housing at 45 public housing projects around the city. Shortt said the vast majority of those tenants are seniors, disabled, single mothers or minorities and struggle to get even the simplest requests - such as unclogging a toilet or getting heat in their units - answered by the Housing Authority. "They live in conditions that no one should have to be living in, frankly," Shortt said. "The mayor needs to get his head out of the clouds and look right in front of him and acknowledge that they need new leadership at the Housing Authority." Mayor defends leader As city administrator, Lee helped recruit Alvarez after then-Mayor Gavin Newsom ousted the agency's previous director in 2007. Lee is a friend of Alvarez's and officiated at the housing director's recent wedding. In late November, Lee told The Chronicle he wasn't aware of the lawsuits and accusations of bullying against Alvarez, though it emerged later that his senior staff had known about them for months and that the mayor had directed the Housing Authority Commission to hire an outside investigator to examine the allegations. The mayor in November told The Chronicle that Alvarez deserved credit for getting "the Housing Authority onto a much more solid economic foundation." Lee has said repeatedly that he is confident Alvarez can run the agency effectively until the results of the outside investigation are complete. In October, HUD sent Lee a letter notifying him its audit for 2011 gave the agency an initial score of 63, noting there were major problems in management. The finalized version, sent to the mayor and commission last month, reduced the score to 54 after the agency's finances were also deemed a major problem. Christine Falvey, spokeswoman for the mayor, said Lee was unavailable to discuss the new score with The Chronicle, but added the mayor had been in contact with HUD officials to discuss their concerns. HUD's scores come about a year after its initial audit, and the latest score is based on the agency's performance in 2011. HUD's December letter includes myriad suggestions for the agency's improvement, including selling property, reducing salaries and benefits, ensuring the commission evaluates financial statements several times a year, turning around vacant units more quickly and contracting out property management. The Housing Authority released a statement on Wednesday reading in part, "The authority's intention is to make critical and necessary systemic changes in a visible and forthcoming way that permanently changes the way the authority conducts business operations for the future." But the Rev. Amos Brown, president of the Housing Authority Commission who will shoulder some of the responsibility for getting the agency off the troubled list, dismissed the notion that HUD's findings are significant. Rating 'doesn't matter' Asked what the score and the new troubled status mean for the agency, he said, "Nothing. Not one thing. It doesn't matter." Brown told The Chronicle in November that Alvarez had inherited an agency "in trouble, in shambles" and had vastly improved it. Rose Dennis, spokeswoman for the Housing Authority, said it was "myopic" to look at the "situation for 365 days" when Alvarez has led the agency for 4 1/2 years. "A lot of very significant accomplishments have occurred during that time," she said. According to Gibson of HUD, the agency didn't receive a score in 2008, the year of Alvarez's arrival. Its 2009 score was 76, its 2010 score was 75, and its 2011 score is 54. HUD dinged the Housing Authority in particular for management, giving it a 12 out of 25, and finances, giving it a five out of 25. The agency scored better on the physical condition of properties and its capital fund. New credit rating The agency on Monday touted its new credit rating from Standard & Poor's, an A+, which can only be topped by scores of AAA and AA. Larry Bush, who worked as spokesman for the regional office of HUD for 15 years ending in 2010 and is a critic of the mayor, said that can be explained because Standard & Poor's gave the agency a lot of credit for the city's Hope SF program to tear down and rebuild the worst public housing projects. The first one, Hunters View in Hunters Point, debuts Thursday. The Mayor's Office of Housing is running the Hope SF program and contracting out the work to private and nonprofit development companies. The Housing Authority operates the units, but isn't involved much in their reconstruction. "They're an A+ on the things they can't touch," Bush said. "They're dismal on the things they do handle." Heather Knight is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf |