San Francisco Supervisors Should Take Control of Housing Authority

After former Mayor Art Agnos wrote an editorial about the San Francisco Housing Authority in the March 11 San Francisco Chronicle, I asked longtime Agnos critic Barbara Meskunas, a former chair of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission and currently an aide to Supervisor Ed Jew, what she thought of his analysis. “ It was great,” she said, “he got everything right except I thought six kids rather than five died in the 1997 Housing Authority fire.”

When Agnos and Meskunas are on the same page, there is clearly a broad consensus over the need for systemic change at the SFHA.

Agnos was the last Mayor who really made improving conditions for Housing Authority tenants a priority---and it did him little good politically, as voters defeated him for re-election. Other mayors have seen little upside in getting into political fights with entrenched and politically powerful interests on behalf of a constituency that does not give campaign contributions and whose voting is infrequent at best.

When Terrence Hallinan was on the Board of Supervisors in the early 1990’s, he held hearings on the issue of the Board taking control over public housing. Opposition was strong, and the idea went nowhere.

In 2001, Supervisor Matt Gonzalez floated the idea of a Supervisors takeover and held a hearing to get input. The Housing Authority organized a march opposing any discussion of the idea, and speakers accused Gonzalez of racism for raising the issue even though a proposed takeover was not even on the meeting agenda.

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