Housing authority adopts SEMAP/CMAP certification, staff say agency is 'high performer'

The Housing Authority of the City and County of San Francisco voted Nov. 17 to adopt and submit its Section 8 management assessment certification (referred to in the meeting as CMAP) for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2025. Staff told commissioners the submission reflects a 95% compliance rate and would classify the agency as a HUD "high performer."

Staff presenters said the authority’s score rose after targeted work to reconcile reporting discrepancies with HUD and to correct backlogged files, and cited weekly meetings with contractors and a new monthly CMAP review as the principal drivers of improvement. "By doing that reconciling work we were able to bring our reporting rate from around 80% up to 100%," a presenter said, describing the reporting-rate reconciliation as the biggest driver in moving from "troubled" status in 2023 to high performer in 2025.

The presentation walked commissioners through individual indicators used by HUD—selection from the waiting list, rent-reasonableness, adjusted-income calculations, inspection and reinspection processes, reporting rates, lease-up and the family self-sufficiency program—as well as a bonus deconcentration indicator. Staff reported full or near-full compliance on most indicators, noted targeted corrections already made in files, and described ongoing training and new quality-control steps to sustain performance. For example, staff reported a projected full score on selection from the waiting list and a projected 95% overall compliance rate, while saying the adjusted-income indicator scored 89.4% in staff testing (just below the 90% threshold for full points).

Commissioners welcomed the progress but pressed for a commissioner-facing dashboard that would show specific metrics and responsible parties—how many families are enrolled in Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS), the number of units that failed initial inspection, trends in utilization versus per-unit cost and other figures that would let commissioners distinguish operational monitoring from policy choices. "It would be helpful to see, for each of these indicators, what metric is being tracked and who the responsible party is," one commissioner said. Staff agreed to follow up with the requested metrics.

During the public comment period, residents and community members praised staff work in reconciling HUD reporting and urged continued transparency and inclusion of community researchers and interns in future work. After discussion and a motion, the commission approved the CMAP certification by roll-call vote with Commissioners Mary Anne Pikes, Luana Kim and Falafuta Satili recorded as voting "Aye" and Commissioner Juan Carlos Cancino absent. The board authorized the acting executive director to submit the certification to HUD.