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DBI says most housing‑authority complaints are resolved; commissioners press for better data and repeat‑offender lists
Summary
DBI housing staff told the commission that of roughly 150 housing‑authority cases sampled since the 2007 MOU there were about 244 housing code items and just four open cases in the sample; commissioners pressed for better breakdowns, lists of repeat offenders, and clarified that current work is complaint‑driven and constrained by staffing shortages.
Rosemary Bosque, chief housing inspector at the Department of Building Inspection, presented a summary of housing‑authority complaints and the MOU process on Aug. 17, saying DBI pulled a sample of cases and found about 150 reported complaints that spanned roughly 244 discrete housing‑code items since the MOU executed in February 2007.
Bosque said the majority of heat and hot‑water complaints are heat‑related and that DBI is meeting the one‑business‑day response requirement about 94% of the time; she also said about 27 cases sampled remain open for various reasons (duplicates, pending permits, timing of final inspections).
Commissioners pressed staff for more granular statistics — for example, resolution time broken out by 24 hours, 48 hours, one week, and over a week — and for a list of repeat offenders or problem properties if those show up in the sampling. Bosque acknowledged the department’s current complaint‑driven approach and said extracting the data is time‑consuming because the complaint‑tracking system lacks fields to flag many specific items; the sampling required hours of manual review (295 cases were examined to create the heat/hot‑water snapshot).
DBI also reported staffing challenges: clerical positions and inspection vacancies have been reduced since 2008, leaving a thinner staff and three housing‑inspector vacancies in the housing unit, which limits the ability to shift from complaint‑driven work to proactive inspections without additional resources.
Public commenters from the Housing Rights Committee and tenant advocates described cases where tenants feel compelled to withhold rent to get repairs addressed and urged stiffer penalties for recalcitrant owners; Henry (SFCIG representative) suggested substantial daily fines for chronic noncompliance. DBI said it will pursue the commissioners’ requests for a repeat‑offender list and plans targeted “heat sweeps” going into the fall to check time‑clock settings and boiler permits.
Next steps: DBI and the housing authority will coordinate further and return with more detailed statistics, a possible proactive survey approach and a proposal for how outreach partners can help manage complaints without creating unfunded mandates for DBI staff.
