Over the past few weeks, residents of the Frederick Douglas Haynes Garden Apartments in San Francisco’s Fillmore district have been moving back to their homes after property owner HumanGood completed an eight-month renovation of the 104-unit complex.
The homecoming was met with mixed reviews by residents. Some said they appreciated the new stoves and refrigerators, and better lighting, but complained that they had lost square footage. Others said that their showers had low water pressure and took too long to heat up.
But for some of the tenants in the affordable complex at Golden Gate Avenue and Buchanan Street, the reopening is coming with a major downside: a scary jump in rent.
Patricia and Leroy Beasley, who live in the apartments with their daughter and grandson, have seen their post-construction rent jump 36%, from $1,408 to $1,921 a month. And that’s just the beginning: the family has been notified it will see $513 annual increases for five years — a total of $2,565 — bringing their rent for the three-bedroom place to $3,973 a month by 2026.
Patricia Beasley, who worked for the city for 39 years before retiring in 2011, said she was shocked to learn that her apartment was not protected by rent control. Her husband was a property manager before retirement. The family, city natives, moved to the complex in 1977.
“I know we have to pay rent increases — but that large amount?” she said. “That is too much.”
The rent increases are the result of a law that exempts federally funded affordable housing complexes from rent control. Because the property recently went through a $100 million recapitalization and renovation paid for with Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, rent control doesn’t apply to the building.
For 84 of the units, that is not a problem because there are project-based Section 8 vouchers attached to the apartments. But for the other 20 units, half of which are occupied, HumanGood is jacking up rents to come into compliance with Department of Housing and Urban Development rules, which require that households pay 30% of their income on rent.
Patricia Beasley unpacks belongings with her husband, Leroy, in their unit at the Frederick Douglas Haynes Garden Apartments in San Francisco. The family is facing a $500 rent increase each year over the next five years.
Brontë Wittpenn/The ChronicleFor the Beasley family, the giant leap in rent stems from the fact that their daughter Mia, a single mom of a high-school freshman, works at UCSF. Combined with her parents’ retirement income, the family makes enough to stay in San Francisco, but would not be able to afford a market-rate unit in the city.
Maria Zamudio, an organizer with Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, said HumanGood, which bought the property from the Third Baptist Church, has been pressuring residents to move into smaller units, dividing multigenerational families like the Beasleys to convert the larger three-bedroom apartments into more efficient and lucrative one- and two-bedrooms.
“They are trying to squeeze as much profit as possible out of this multifamily building,” Zamudio said. “They are offering buyouts, saying, ‘Hey this unit is too big for you. Don’t you want something smaller?’ Folks are feeling manipulated.”
In a statement to The Chronicle, HumanGood said the company is “proud of our renovated Frederick Douglas Haynes community in San Francisco, which serves low-income seniors and families in the heart of San Francisco’s Fillmore District.”
“We completed construction of the project in January 2022, and all residents have returned to their homes in the renovated community,” the group said.
It added that the property is “HUD regulated” and that the tenants had lost their attempts to argue that the units are subject to rent control.
So far, residents’ efforts to argue their plight before the city have been unsuccessful. An attorney representing eight of the households seeing rent increases appealed the case to the Rent Board, arguing that the city’s rent control ordinance includes an “exception to the exemption” that allows protection for tenants living in properties where low-income tax credits have been used.
At that hearing, in December, tenants explained that they moved into the property well before the tax credits were obtained and should therefore be under rent control. The rent board rejected the appeal.
Supervisor Dean Preston, who represents the Western Addition, said this is the third time he has dealt with residents in low-income housing complexes losing rent control protection because of tax-credit investment.
“They are facing rent increases because of a financial regulatory agreement that they were not even a part of,” Preston said. “It’s totally unfair to the tenants.”
In a city that invests heavily in affordable housing and where a new unit costs $800,000 to build, the relatively small amount needed to help tenants stay in their units is a pittance, Preston said. He argued the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development should step in to help these families stay in their units.
“It blows my mind that (the agency) has not just found a way to fund this,” he said.
In a statement, the housing and community development office said it “regularly works with property managers and residents to ensure that we are in compliance with meeting income requirements and that rents match resident income.”
Frederick Douglas Haynes is largely home to the sort of longtime Black families that have been forced out of San Francisco over the past 50 years, originally because of development and more recently because of rising housing costs.
On a recent afternoon, neighbor Renee Cyprien, a Navy veteran who retired after a career as a Greyhound bus driver, construction worker, and medical clerk, stopped by to commiserate with the Beasley family. Cyprien said her unit is under Section 8 but that she supports the right of her neighbors to be protected by rent control.
“Five hundred bucks? That is a heavy load. You still have bills to pay,” she said. “They are not accounting for that. It’s not like this is a luxury condo or anything. But it’s home.”
J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen
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With no more rent control for their refurbished apartments these SF tenants are seeing rents soar - San Francisco Chronicle
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