There are plenty of reasons beyond beneficence and altruism for a city to establish a senior home repair program. Picking up the costs of repairing old people’s homes cuts down on blight, preserves generational assets, raises neighborhood home values and enables seniors to age gracefully at home. But, yes, it’s also a beneficent and altruistic thing to do.
San Francisco purports to be a beneficent and altruistic city. In January 2022, it established a senior home repair program, which is run by the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.
And, in the ensuing 23 months, it has repaired three homes. This is not a misprint. Three. As in, the number of points Steph Curry gets for a stepback jumper.
But, things could be worse: When I wrote to the mayor’s housing office in October of this year, asking for statistics, it confirmed that, since January 2022, only two home projects had been completed — and only three had even started. When I checked in again last week, I was informed that that another project had been completed — and, now, 10 more are underway.
So, coincidentally or not, right after being contacted by the media to inquire about the efficacy of a nearly two-year-old program, a flurry of activity apparently commenced. Regardless, that’s for the good.
What’s not so good are the experiences recounted by the participants in this program, who are predominantly Black. Mission Local spoke to around half a dozen of them. They recounted puzzling, interminable delays, and great difficulty achieving even rudimentary tasks, such as sending in an application and having it acknowledged. Some participants tell us they mailed or faxed in an application three or even four times before it was received — a months-long delay. Participants, some of whom are in their 80s or even their 90s, complain they were made to track down and submit a never-ending cavalcade of financial documents. Often, they had to resend the same documents again and again and again. This, too, led to delays.
The resident of one of the completed jobs said she was pleased with the repairs. But others were not: One elderly participant said the people doing work on her home were not properly paid, and came to her seeking money. She said some of them told her they had been hired off of Craigslist.
Despite being provided forgivable loans of $20,000 or more, some participants told us that the stress and aggravation just wasn’t worth it. They wouldn’t recommend this program to their friends and loved ones.
And, some program participants aren’t here to weigh in. Delays stretched on for so long that, in at least two cases, homeowners enrolled in San Francisco’s senior home repair program died before repairs were even commenced, let alone completed.
“They just give you too many false hopes.” That’s 65-year-old Betty Jackson’s summation of the senior home repair program that was so inefficient, she was often moved to tears.
Jackson is handling matters for her 98-year-old mother, Bessie, who has lived in their Ingleside home since 1965. Bessie Jackson can get down her stairs all right, but going back up was increasingly a problem — neighbors or her offensive lineman-sized grandson were required to hoist her up like a fireman and carry her to the door. This was awkward and undignified, and Bessie hated it.
Applying to the Senior Home Repair Program for a chair lift seemed a perfect solution. And it was — or could have been. In the end, the city conditionally underwrote $19,000 worth of work, installing additional lighting, handicapped bars in the bathroom and, of course, the chair lift. The work, itself, only required a matter of days. The problem, however, was all the time when there was no work.
“It took seven months before they even came to the conclusion of who was going to install the chair lift,” says Betty Jackson. Then actually getting a construction crew on-site took months longer. In the end, installing a chairlift in the Jackson home ended up being a 10-month project — longer if you count the multiple times Betty Jackson was forced to run down to the local copy shop and fax and re-fax the initial application.
And, while Betty Jackson was spending months calling about inexplicable holdups, her mother was falling deeper and deeper into depression. In the end, Bessie Jackson simply refused to leave her room and became a prisoner in her own home.
“Why? Why did it take so long?” wonders Betty Jackson, after the fact. During the months and months of delays, Bessie Jackson was trapped upstairs.
“She was so looking forward to getting it, and it was not happening,” Betty Jackson recalls. “I kept having to turn around and say, ‘You have to wait a little bit longer.’”
“It took seven months before they even came to the conclusion of who was going to install the chair lift.”
Betty Jackson
If you’re wondering if senior home repair programs everywhere run at such a sclerotic pace, they don’t. A program in Washington, D.C., for example, provides loans of up to $75,000, and knocks out about 50 projects a year. There are scores of programs across the state and nation; this academic paper charted 113 of them. Many of them complete 100 projects a year — or more. San Francisco isn’t in virgin territory here; plenty of other jurisdictions do this and do it somewhat effectively.
But San Francisco, to crib the line from “Sesame Street,” is doing its own thing — and it’s not quite the same. Cera Clark, who looks out for her 92-year-old aunt, Gloria Gregory, had high hopes that the city could expediently fix the hole in Gregory’s roof left by the New Year’s Eve 2022 windstorm. No such luck: The re-roofing, a two-day job, turned out to be an eight-month process.
“I was constantly asking why this was taking so long. Shouldn’t you be working on this now?” recalled Clark. The delays meant that Gregory’s faulty roof was not fixed during the region’s rainy season. The family took matters into its own hands — a cousin who grew up with a roofer father clambered on top of the home and installed a tarp. But not every family has a cousin who used to moonlight as a roofer to lean on.
Clark says she’s satisfied with the work done on her aunt’s home. “Overall, it’s an excellent program. But it needs to be revamped to be expedited,” she says. “I have worked with the government. Things take forever. And when you’re dealing with seniors, you don’t want things to take forever.”
The Mayor’s Office of Housing tells us that there are four dedicated staffers on this program. As of October, nonprofit Rebuilding Together San Francisco had been paid more than $325,000 to administer it over two fiscal years — a tally that far exceeds the cost of the completed jobs, which is reportedly less than $100,000.
As recently as two months ago, only three projects had commenced, let alone been completed. One does wonder what everyone was up to all that time.
Cheryl Taylor has been visiting her family home on Gilman Street in Bayview for “as long as I can remember.” For 63 years, it was her auntie and uncle’s house, and she used to come over from the Fillmore on the 22, and then catch the 15. The cornerstone church used to be a gas station, and then a milk company, a record company, a skating rink and, finally, a club before finding God. She used to walk to Candlestick and watch the crowds go by after the Niners games. “When I first learned to drive, I’d go to Candlestick and drive in the parking lot,” she says with a smile. “I learned to drive on my auntie’s deuce-and-a-quarter.”
When auntie Berthina Mercer died at age 96 in 2019, Taylor was shocked to inherit the home. The 66-year-old mother and grandmother, and 20-year paraeducator at Burton High School had been living in Section 8 housing and dealing with slumlords and rat infestations. This was a blessing. At last, her family of six had some steadiness.
But only so much steadiness. A closet-sized enclosed porch abutting the back of the house was severely dry-rotted, and was gradually separating from the rest of the structure. “When I went back there and stepped down, I felt the floor move under me,” says Taylor.
Last May, she applied to the Senior Home Repair Program. She told me that nonprofit and city officials sat in the same seats at the kitchen table where I was sitting. They saw the sagging, dry-rotted porch. And, she says, they assured her they could help.
In September of last year, she received an email from the mayor’s office pre-approving a loan for $73,032.94 (The ceiling for loans provided to participants in the senior home repair program is ostensibly $50,000, but this appears to be a guideline more than a rule).
In February, however, Taylor says she received a terse email informing her she’d been dropped from the program altogether. She says she was told the loan pre-approval had expired. But, on her approval letter, there is no mention of an expiration date nor any indication that haste should be made. During the program’s delays, she says, her contractor had upped his asking price. But Taylor went and found another contractor who said he could do it for less than her approved loan amount — and, she adds, that any delays were not of her making.
As of October, nonprofit Rebuilding Together San Francisco had been paid more than $325,000 to administer this program over two fiscal years — a tally that far exceeds the cost of the completed jobs, which is reportedly less than $100,000.
Taylor also says that city officials told her they could not replace her deck, as the work, which could trace back to 60 or more years, or even date to the origin of the 96-year-old house, was not permitted. They floated the possibility of doing away with the deck and simply building a new set of stairs. This would be a city-funded downgrade, but a downgrade nevertheless.
The notion that the unpermitted nature of the deck as a sticking point struck several building inspectors as ludicrous. There is nothing keeping new construction here from being permitted and built legally, regardless of what someone did here during the Eisenhower years or earlier. If anyone wanted to be cute about it, they could get permits to replace 50 percent of the deck and stairs due to dry rot, and then subsequently obtain another 50 percent dry-rot permit — thereby de-facto replacing everything. All the cool kids are doing that.
It does seem odd that the city, for so long, allowed Rodrigo Santos, Academy of Art et al. to do as they pleased and then find a path to legality — but is taking the hard line on Cheryl Taylor, the 20-year paraeducator and grandma raising her three school-age grandkids.
That seems neither beneficent nor altruistic.
Taylor applied to the senior home repair program in May 2022. So far, all she appears to have gotten from it is a back door installed so sloppily that it doesn’t close completely, allowing legions of mice to invade her home. And, of course, mental anguish.
“This is causing so much stress. I have migraines from the back of my neck to the front of my head; I had to have an MRI,” she said. With every minor tremor, she fears that her house will partially collapse, and she will be financially ruined. And this would be generational ruin.
“I do not know how much longer God will allow me to stay on this earth. I just want to make sure my kids and grandkids have a stable home.”
THIS should be a breakout quotation: “As of October, nonprofit Rebuilding Together San Francisco had been paid more than $325,000 to administer it over two fiscal years — a tally that far exceeds the cost of the completed jobs, which is reportedly less than $100,000.”
That expense ratio would receive a failing grade for a charity (and yes, Rebuilding Together is a non-profit that accepts charitable donations) – no more than about a third of charitable receipts should be spent on administration, the rest should go to program ends. These numbers turn that ratio on its head.
But in SF, the City pays no heed to how its money is spent, it is simply handed out to officials’ various preferred beneficiaries. This is the problem with privatizing public services – whether to profit or non-profit entities – there’s always a skim. This one’s just particularly dramatic.
“This is the problem with privatizing public services”. Not generally so, considering how George Moscone put Jim Jones (yes, that Jim Jones) on City payroll… It’s about the Jimmies and Joes, not the X’s and O’s.
There are plenty of examples of successful, uncorrupt administrative states. And voters have recourse when their government fails.
There are no examples of successful public-nonprofit partnerships. And it has all the bad incentives of crony capitalism.
You miss my point – where the players go to line up becomes a technicality when you have a culture of corruption, incompetence and laziness.
No I didn’t if you believe like I do that comes from systems, not the other way around.
Stephen —
Good suggestion. I’ll make it so.
JE
RTSF (Rebuilding Together San Francisco) does not keep a brick-and-mortar office in the City. They pay a modest amount for staff to hot desk part-time at the 535 Mission Street WeWork Building. It’s just 3 full-time staff excluding the ED so $500K for salary and benefits is interesting. More interesting is $673K for “other expenses”, and another half a million dollars coming in and reported under equally veiled, vague categories. This is a LOT of money moving through a relatively small organization with a first-time ED at the helm and little to zero accountability for where these big chunks of money end up. Indeed and sadly, the nothing burger MOHCD got in exchange for giving RTSF so much money to help these senior homeowners is no suprise.
How come I am not surprised that a San Francisco program does not do much.Could someone’s friends need a job to do nothing?Could a relative of a SF employee need a $90,000 a year job to show up once a week to work?
Thank you for this outstanding reporting Joe. I hope the city provides a response and some corrective action based on your good work.
For Rebuilding Together San Francisco’s budget it appears of the $1.3M they get from SF they spent up to $450K on construction supplies and labor.
I reviewed Rebuilding Together San Francisco’s IRS Form 990 which they must file as a non-profit (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943107808/202341249349301714/full).
It showed, for the fiscal year ending Dec 2022:
$1.3M in contribution and grants plus $214K of program service revenue. I am not an expert in reading 990s but I believe this all came from a single government source that must have been SF
$1.17M total expenses consisting of
– $500K salaries and benefits
– $673K other expenses
— the other expenses consisted of misc office expenses, rent, etc and $125K construction materials and $320K for “CONTRUCTION [sic] CONTRACT LABOR: PROGRAM SERVICE EXPENSES 272,776. and PROGRAM SERVICE EXPENSES 16,561. MANAGEMENT AND GENERAL EXPENSES 30,048.” I don’t know what Program Service Expenses are, hopefully it’s the people doing real construction work but impossible to say.
Another amazing piece on our dysfunctional city programs. Amazing the lights stay on… oh right that’s the marginally functional PGE’s responsibilities. How people can read story after story like this and then call for complete control by SF public utility or back a city run Public bank blows my mind.
Great reporting Joe. Who’s London going to blame this on?
If you attend any of the CA Public Bank meetings, it’s clear the SF reps have no clue what they’re talking about and imagine a public bank is something like a slush fund for all your hobby projects / laundered get out the vote efforts. I don’t think a single person there could describe the business model of a bank.
Some years ago, retired Judge Quentin Kopp penned as article which
cited that about 17 % of the workforce within San Francisco were with
non-profits. Now, post pandemic, would not doubt if that is as high
as 20-25 %. That is a large interest voting block. And, it seems that
there is not an established policy to monitor their structures and
practices. Just keep pouring funds and leave it at that.
A true Social-Welfare Bureaucratic Complex, a la the
Military Industrial Complex of yesteryear, on a local lever.
Excellent reporting. Shedding light on this incredible waste of taxpayer dollars is some fine journalism. A related issue – is this really a good use of taxpayer dollars in the first place, even if the program were not so corrupt? A quick search indicates that the owners’ equity in two of the featured houses is roughly $1 million and $1.1 million (the addresses are easy to find from the names). Is handing money to literal millionaires really good policy? I understand that it’s very nice to be able to keep a family home, and in a world of infinite government assistance resources, I’d be all for it. But that is not the real world. These homeowners could sell and live on the proceeds quite nicely for the rest of their lives. Seems like the finite dollars could be targeted to get a lot more bang for the buck.
I fully agree with this. “House rich” is just “rich,” IMO. If you can sell, move into something smaller (maybe a maintenance-free condo) and pocket the difference (minus taxes, which seems fair after decades of huge appreciation), I think you should have to do that before being gifted public money.
In the U.S., however, we have a cult-like devotion to “the home.” We value it so much that we don’t think anyone should ever be required to leave it. Better to make taxpayers foot the bill for the private expenses of the homeowner than to make a homeowner move.
Thanks for this great expose of yet another poorly managed SF City government program. Is there any City agency that is not corrupt and/ or incompetent?
Solid work, Joe. Thank you!
Every one of these so-called nonprofit entities needs an audit. Many are clearly gravy trains for administrators and people connected with la city familia. Thanks for being the only news organization in SF not corrupted by the powers that be.
maybe its a starter fund for the seawall white elephant project? or a recall or run for office campaign? or for the first legal salvo on the rebuilding SF efforts to push people out of frisco, and ignore everything else needed? Lots to pay, no money to play…..
Joe,
Great job which is why I’ve been an Eskenazi groupie since the SF Weekly days.
I can’t wait for computers (AGI ?) to take over City government.
Right now I’m kinda liking Daniel Lurie for Mayor.
And, CMC for MVP !!
The problem is you.
Yeah – you reading this.
Rebuilding Together San Francisco needs more board members to run the show.
Are you a muckety-muck at a big Architectural Firm or Construction Company or Vice President at Salesforce?
Then why have you not joined the already 15 existing board members to help right the ship?
Obviously there just aren’t enough executives to handle the work load.
Applications being accepted right now!
Additionally, Rebuilding Together San Francisco has 3 “exciting” career opportunities – 2 involving the Senior Home Repair Program.
No wonder they’re having issues.
The 7 current staffers is just not enough.
Don’t worry – you won’t have to actually lift a hammer or schlep lumber because:
Volunteers are needed to do the real work ASAP!
– Skilled Trades Volunteer
– Community Build Day General Volunteer
– She Builds General Volunteer
Strap on a tool belt and let’s all help out!
And finally, Rebuilding Together San Francisco has a budget of only $1,100,000.
Donate!
Rent on the 14th floor offices at that fancy high-rise at 535 Mission St. ain’t cheap!