Change is afoot once again for Plaza East Apartments, the troubled 193-unit Western Addition public housing complex where former Mayor London Breed grew up.
McCormack Baron Salazar — a national development firm based in St. Louis that had partial ownership over Plaza East along with the San Francisco Housing Authority — is stepping away from overseeing the property 25 years after redeveloping the project in 2000.
Tenants worry that the departure of the firm means the long-planned redevelopment — which would bring up to 750 new units to the property and refurbish existing units and has started and stalled for years — will never happen.
“We shouldn’t be penalized because the developer is removed from the project,” said Dennis Williams, a resident at Plaza East and a local developer on small projects, who says he was told by McCormack Baron Salazar that he would be involved in the redevelopment. “We just want to know where that stands.”
Kelvin Soodeen, who has lived at Plaza East since 2009, said there has been a lack of transparency from the city and developers. “We’ve been in limbo for a long time,” said Soodeen, speaking at a Housing Authority meeting on Friday where McCormack Baron Salazar’s departure was announced.
Though Plaza East Apartments was rebuilt just 25 years ago, it is in dire need of repairs. McCormack Baron Salazar had planned on partnering with an investor to fix and refinance the dilapidated apartments — while also adding mixed income units to the public housing project.
But since that investor stepped aside in October 2024, the future of Plaza East has been uncertain. McCormack Baron’s departure adds another wrinkle to those plans.
The San Francisco Housing Authority will now shoulder full ownership over the complex while it searches for a new developer. Plaza East Apartments will be the only subsidized housing development in San Francisco solely owned by the Housing Authority and not a private firm.
The change in ownership could, theoretically, create more accountability for tenants, who have long complained about poor conditions — black mold, a lack of adequate safety, and leaky plumbing that has caused water to flow brown from the tap and sewage to seep from the floorboards.
Conditions were so poor that, after nearly 50 low-income tenants walked into Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office this summer and demanded a meeting, he acquiesced and last month toured Plaza East, stepping inside mold-infested bathrooms and walking by windows marked by bullet holes.
With the Housing Authority now the sole owner, the agency will assert direct control over property management and financing repairs.
That could improve transparency. When Mission Local asked the Housing Authority for performance audits of the prior property manager, the John Stewart Company’s, a spokesperson for the Housing Authority stated that the city did not even have such records.
The developer, McCormack Baron Salazar, held those records, the city said — and did not share them publicly.
In the past, the Housing Authority has kept scorecards for property managers in its portfolio of public housing. At other similar complexes in Potrero Hill and Bayview, where the San Francisco Housing Authority used to own the former public housing developments, scorecards and city inspections show routine failures by property managers.
In an interview with Mission Local, Lurie said that, unlike at other privately owned low-income housing complexes in San Francisco, the city is “able to do more” at Plaza East because of its partial public ownership, like replacing property management firms that perform poorly.
The Housing Authority is going through changes as well: Its CEO Tonia Lediju abruptly left the department last month and was replaced by Dan Adams, the former head of the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development. The Housing Authority has as recently as 2020 reported deep financial difficulties.
Bell Properties, which in August replaced the previous property management firm after more than a dozen tenants filed a lawsuit alleging negligence, abuse, and mismanagement, will still manage the property.
McCormack Baron Salazar had planned to withdraw from Plaza East Apartments for nearly a year, but the Department of Housing and Urban Development did not grant approval of the Missouri firm’s departure until earlier this year.
Plans to refinance and redevelop Plaza East have been in the works since 2018 — but have been largely unsuccessful. Strada Investment was tapped to upgrade the housing complex and add mixed-use housing to Plaza East in 2022, but last year walked away from those plans.
It was then that McCormack Baron Salazar first requested to leave the complex. In September of last year, Vincent Bennet, the firm’s president, wrote in a letter addressed to the Housing Authority that the “intent” to refinance and redevelop the project has, since it was planned in 2018, “not occurred.”
The firm’s departure, says Bennet, “is in the best interests of the Project and its residents.”
Tenants who wish to make public comment on the departure of McCormack Baron can do so on Sept. 25 at City Hall Room 408 during the Housing Authority commission’s next hearing.
