It seems counterintuitive to scrap housing that people need in exchange for hotel rooms, especially when the SF tourism economy is struggling. But SoMa’s Mosser Hotel hoped to do just that, though the SF Planning Commission shot that idea down Thursday.

The Mosser Hotel Fourth and Jessie streets does have about three dozen standard tourist hotel units, but the vast majority of its rooms are currently designated as SRO units. So the hotel’s ownership hatched a plan to convert 72 of its current 81 SRO units into tourist hotel units.

In order to satisfy the legal requirements to do this, the Mosser Hotel offered to pay for 72 units at the Minna Street Hotel (509 Minna Street), units currently being used as supportive housing for formerly incarcerated. These Minna Street Hotel units operate under some very strict re-entry rules, like no alcohol or drugs, and men and women can’t live on the same floor.

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But activists mobilized against this plan. “This move will not only take away housing units that low-income residents desperately need, but would cannibalize demand from other hotels that are already struggling to fill rooms,” the South of Market Community Action Network argued in the Instagram post above.

And on Thursday, the SF Planning Commission agreed with the activists. The commission rejected the conversion request 5-2 in a late Thursday afternoon vote.

Mosser Hotel ownership argued that the SRO tenants would be far better off at the Minna Street Hotel. That facility has individual bathrooms in each room, and a shared kitchen. The Mosser Hotel has common bathrooms, and no kitchens, not even a shared one.  

“The residential rooms are not marketed or occupied” at the Mosser, the owners' attorney Attorney John Kevlin told the commission. “It’s a tourist hotel, not an apartment building, and it’s operated as such.”

But critics have argued that the rooms aren’t occupied because the Mosser has been intentionally keeping the rooms empty in hopes of getting their tourist hotel conversion.

The city’s rules say that an SRO-to-tourist-hotel conversion requires a one-to-one replacement of the number of rooms being converted. So they’re offering to pay for 72 rooms at the Minna.

But those Minna rooms may not even be legally recognized as housing units. They’re operated under a contract with the city’s Adult Probation Department; the tenants do not have conventional leases, it’s part of a re-entry program. The commission argued at length whether those re-entry program rooms even count as part of the housing market, or rather, whether the Mosser paying for those units really even counted as “replacing” units.

“There are no units being brought back into the housing market,” SOMA Pilipinas land use analyst David Woo told the commission. “509 Minna is currently being operated as supportive housing, and has been continuously operating as supportive housing since 2021. The units at 509 Minna are therefore already being operated as available supportive housing and not ‘off the market,’ and are not potential units to even be brought back into the market.”

But Commissioner Sean McGarry, who voted in favor of the conversion, argued this would actually help the city’s housing stock. “At Minna Street we have the opportunity here to actually make 72 units in perpetuity SRO, and subject to rent control ordinance. Where we don’t have that now.”

He added that at the Minna Street Hotel, “The facilities there are a lot better.”

But ultimately, the commission did not warm to this idea. “This proposal here does lack comparability,” Commissioner Derek Braun said before the vote. “This does not fulfill the requirement of one of our Planning Department policies of conserving and protecting housing.”

And after all, SF City Hall is trying to get more people to live downtown. So maybe it doesn’t make sense to squeeze out potential downtown residents, when hotels are distinctly financially screwed at the moment.

Related: SF Finally Getting Somewhat Better at Filling Long-Vacant Supportive Housing Units [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

A 1 am apartment fire Wednesday morning on the second floor of the former Hotel Diva has left four people displaced, though no one was injured.

A fire broke out early Wednesday morning at an SRO at 440 Geary Street, near Union Square, and four people have been displaced, according to the Chronicle. The fire was at the former Hotel Diva, which is now an SRO known simply as the Diva that serves as supportive housing.

According to the Chronicle, firefighters were called to the scene shortly after 1 am, and had the fire under control by 1:22 am.

The fire apparently broke out on the second floor of the Diva, which has seven floors. Fire authorities have already ruled that the cause of the fire was accidental.

There were thankfully no injuries reported, though again, four residents were displaced from their units. Other residents at the facility were not displaced, though some have had to move to other vacant units in the building.

The Hotel Diva had been a traditional Union Square boutique hotel in the last decade, and was formerly known as the Hotel Somerton. Thanks to a $29.1 million state grant in October 2020, the City of San Francisco was able to purchase the facility and turn it into 121 units of supportive housing for the formerly homeless.

Related: Hotel Diva in San Francisco Will Become Supportive Housing for Homeless [SFist]

Image: Episcopal Community Services of SF

In a city with thousands of unhoused people, it’s pretty aggravating that housing intended for them is just sitting empty. But there’s some comfort in the fact that SF has cut the vacancy rate at supportive housing sites nearly in half.

It’s no secret that most of what San Francisco calls “supportive housing” for the formerly homeless is located in the Tenderloin, and the lion’s share of this supportive housing is in what we call single-room occupancy hotels (SROs). A little over a year and a half ago, the Chronicle did a deep-dive report into these establishments and found they offered a lifestyle not much better than actually being homeless: with shared bathrooms and kitchens, broken-down facilities, vermin infestations, and rampant drug use and mental illness.  

For these and other reasons, sometimes vacancy at these SROs is quite high, with more than a thousand units (1,060 to be exact)  sitting empty a year ago this time. This is maddening, considering the city is paying money for these units to just sit empty while people are cold and out on the streets. But in a new follow-up, the Chronicle reports now only 730 of those units are vacant, lowering the supportive housing vacancy rate from 7.8% to 11.5%.

Each SRO building has its own unique issues, though the Chron found that about a dozen of the overall 150-some SROs accounted for a third of all the vacant rooms. So identifying the problems is easy, fixing them is likely harder.

“Some buildings will always have a little bit higher vacancies because they have some unique characteristics, but we want to make sure no building is over 10% and the entire portfolio is below 7%,” SF Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing housing placement manager Chris Block told the Chronicle. “That’s the balancing act that we hope to achieve.”

But the primary reason most of those units are sitting empty is paperwork — someone wants a unit, but the wheels of bureaucracy are still spinning to get them into it. SF City Hall bureaucracy is hard enough when you’re a housed person, much harder when you haven’t got a home, let alone a filing cabinet. The city feels it’s making strides in cutting down wait times, and offering hope that maybe those 730 currently vacant units can be occupied as quickly as possible.    

Related: A Huge Number of SF's Supportive Housing Units Are In Run-Down, Vermin-Infested SROs, and It's Barely Better Than Being Homeless [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

City Attorney David Chiu has three Chinatown SRO landlords at the center of his latest lawsuit, saying their properties are “a public nuisance,” and that “dozens of health and safety violations linger” at these buildings.

It’s sort of a well-known thing that San Francisco landlords will sometimes take advantage of tenants who are not fluent English speakers and don’t know their rights, and this practice is particularly common in Chinatown. Some landlords will clean up their act when City Hall applies pressure, others are less willing.

But the Chronicle reported Tuesday that SF City Attorney David Chiu has just sued three Chinatown SRO landlords, all of whose business seems to intertwine, over what the Chron describes as “years of tenant complaints and warnings from officials alleging their living conditions have been ‘inhumane.’”

“It is unacceptable that dozens of immigrant tenants have had to live under these unsafe and unhealthy conditions,” Chiu said in a Tuesday statement. “Landlords have a responsibility to keep up their properties and ensure their tenants have a safe and healthy place to live. These property owners have not met that responsibility and instead profited off the suffering of their tenants. The owners need to be held accountable and make things right.”

The landlords named in Chiu’s suit are Jeff Appendrodt, Shailendra Devdhara, and Kamlesh Patel, all of whom own Chinatown single-occupancy room (SRO) apartment buildings. The buildings in question are 1449 Powell Street, 790 Vallejo Street, and 912 Jackson Street. Chiu’s office says the three buildings are set up “through different ownership configurations” via LLCs.

According to the release, the violations date back to a series of illegal conversions, or addition  of alternative dwelling units ADUs. Chiu’s office provides a (partial) list of the violations recorded up at these properties, including “broken and rusted plumbing, exposed electrical wiring, insect infestations, mold and mildew, unsanitary shared restrooms, malfunctioning appliances, (and) lack of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.” Chiu’s office alleges 21 current outstanding notices of violations from the Department of Building Inspection.

The Chronicle reached one of the landlords, Shailendra Devdhara, who maintained they’ve been making steady improvements. “Painting us as lousy landlords … that’s not who we are,” he told the Chronicle. “I do work with SROs and I obviously love to improve them.”

The lawsuit says “The City is seeking penalties, fees, and injunctive relief to cure the violations at the properties.” According to the Chronicle such cases have drawn millions of dollars of penalties in the past.

Related: A Huge Number of SF's Supportive Housing Units Are In Run-Down, Vermin-Infested SROs, and It's Barely Better Than Being Homeless [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

It took 13 years, but prosecutors at long last won a rape and murder conviction of a 72-year-old man accused of killing and raping a 37-year-old woman in an incident dating back to 2010.

Way back in 2010, Mission Local ran a story about a “suspicious death” at the Mission District SRO Krishna Hotel. We now know that the victim was 37-year-old Amy Mustain, according to KRON4, and the circumstances of her death were far more brutal than initially realized. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins’s office announced Thursday that they’d obtained guilty verdicts for 72-year-old Henry Hall, also then a resident at the Krishna Hotel, on charges of murder, rape by force, and sodomy by use of force.

“I would like to thank the jury for their service and thoughtful application of the law in bringing justice to the victim and her family after 13 long years,” Assistant District Attorney Charly Weissenbach said in a statement. “While there is nothing we can do to bring the victim back, this verdict condemns Mr. Hall for the brutal, violent sexual assault and murder of a particularly vulnerable victim who misplaced her trust and paid the ultimate cost.”

Yes, 13 years seems like a long time to get a guilty verdict, considering that Mustain’s body was found in Hall’s room. But KRON4 points out that Hall has been in custody for about three years at this point, since his September 16, 2020 arrest.

KTVU has some background on the 2010 killing, in which Mustain went to Hall’s room after an argument with her husband. According to police work and forensics, Hall gave Mustain heroin and cocaine before raping and killing her.

According to the DA’s office, Hall faces life in a state prison without parole, and his sentencing is currently scheduled for October 10, 2023.

Related: Suspect Detained in Earlier Kidnapping and Attempted Rape of Elderly SF Woman [SFist]

Image: Cocoablini via Wikimedia Commons

A 29-year-old SRO resident is in custody on charges of attempted murder after allegedly stabbing a Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing employee Wednesday, and the employee is in the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

We often hear the phrase “homeless-industrial complex” as a derogatory slur directed at people who’ve devoted their careers to helping solve the vexing, decades-long problem of homelessness in San Francisco. But many of the lower- to mid-level social workers often put their necks on the line, without particularly good pay, in hopes of making the world a better place.

And we’ve got a stark reminder of the on-the-job risks some of these individuals face, as the Chronicle reports a social worker was stabbed four times Wednesday by an SRO resident at the Tenderloin’s Windsor Hotel.

The victim’s name has not been released, though reportedly that individual remains in the hospital as of Thursday with what are described as non-life threatening injuries. Meanwhile, the 29-year-old SRO suspect Oscar Chatman was quickly arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, vandalism and burglary, and remains in SF County Jail as of Thursday.

SFPD has not released a statement, nor detailed the incident on their Daily Crime Reports. But the Chronicle confirmed with an SFPD spokesperson that police responded to the stabbing at 11 a.m. Wednesday morning, and a union representative for city employees union, SEIU 1021 rep Cheryl Thornton, confirmed that the city employee of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (DHS) was stabbed on the job in  the Tenderloin.

“It’s out of control,” Thornton says, of current city employee working conditions in the Tenderloin.

Related: A BART Custodian Was Wounded By Someone at 24th St. Mission Station Who Was Causing a “Disturbance” [SFist]

Image: Kevin Y. via Yelp

A fire broke out in the Dahlia Hotel on Turk Street around 5:40 a.m. Wednesday, spreading to multiple floors, and it has displaced 25 residents.

According to the San Francisco Fire Department, the fire began on the second floor and a second alarm was immediately called. The fire would soon spread to the upper floors of the building. About 40 minutes after it began, the SFFD announced on Twitter that the fire was contained, as of 6:20 a.m.

Initially, no injuries were reported as a result of the fire, but a subsequent tweet said that one adult had suffered "minor injuries."

The SRO (single-room occupancy hotel) at 74 Turk Street (between Mason and Taylor), called the Dahlia Hotel, is not listed among properties used by the city for supportive housing, and appears to be a standard, longtime SRO with low rates. It has no website or Yelp reviews. It sits across Turk Street from the new hotel and condo development known as The Line and Serif, respectively.

A short story that takes place at the Dahlia is high among Google search results for the place, and describes an SRO inhabited by residents struggling with addiction, "with clean bathrooms and a special garbage shoot for needles."

The hotel, built in 1907, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and a plaque says it has also gone by the names Hotel Taylor and Hotel Thames. The entry hall floor apparently has a terrazzo floor and the resident depicted in the story is quoted saying, "It reminds me of tiles from Pompeii. Whenever I pass through this entryway, I feel like I’m stepping out of a shit-hole and into in ancient Greece, but just for a moment."

Photo: Google Street View

Shelter-in-place may be effective for many San Franciscans, but the curve is hardly being flattened at numerous single-room-occupancy hotels where more flare-ups are being reported.

San Francisco has generally been given high marks for staying-at-home and social distancing, but we continue to hear of troubling outbreaks at senior care facilities, SROs, and homeless shelters. While this may have been inevitable to some degree, the gap between the first case being reported and everyone at the facility being tested will likely lead to recriminations during and after our efforts to get this thing under control. Mission Local reports today on such a 24-person outbreak (22 residents and two staff) at Casa Quezada, a 52-unit SRO near Mission and Duboce Streets, and frustratingly, a six-day gap between the reporting of the first case and the testing of all residents and staff.

Just before 2:30 Friday afternoon, Department of Public Health director Dr. Grant Colfax took some heat over the matter at the mayor’s live daily coronavirus update. “Let me be really clear with the facts about Casa Quezada,” Colfax pushed back. “On April 13, the Health Department confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in a resident of Casa Quezada. On April 15, after a case investigation, a second resident tested positive. Based on that and further investigations, we performed testing on-site of all residents on April 19. We moved all residents and have closed the facility for cleaning.”

“We were as timely and responsive as our testing systems allowed,” Dr. Colfax insisted. He also noted that 21 of these positive-testing patients had underlying health conditions.

But that does not dispute the six-day gap in full testing for the whole facility, which seems like the obvious first move, and the nonprofit that runs the place is outraged.

“Our staff have had to arduously advocate for testing, contact screening and access to isolation and quarantine rooms for our residents,” executive director of Dolores Street Community Services Laura Valdez told Mission Local. “We regret that the testing did not happen sooner. In order to flatten the curve, we need to make sure DPH is properly resourced to prevent and respond to outbreaks.”

Mission Local adds that confirmed infections have hit other SROs like the Grand Southern (four cases), and 16 Virginia (one case). These aren't the only SROs with positive cases, and this weekend's SF Examiner had a lengthy piece on how red tape is tying up reporting and testing at these incredibly high-risk facilities. We’re seeing similar situations as a Navigation Center was shut down this week, and at senior centers, where a 36-case outbreak in Oakland joins other highly afflicted facilities like 37 testing positive at Central Gardens in Japantown, and hundreds of other cases at senior facilities across the Bay Area. So while this is not just a San Francisco thing, we may have a larger than realized gap between public perception of The City’s stay-at-home success and the quiet COVID-19 risks for vulnerable populations in cramped quarters.

Related: Meals on Wheels In San Francisco Sees 60- to 100-Percent Uptick In New Clients Per Week [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

The San Francisco Police Department is asking for the public's help to find an elderly area woman who lost touch with her family over a week ago.

According to SFPD spokesperson Officer Albie Esparza, 73 year-old Lani Uchida "usually stays at SROs in San Francisco" and "typically calls her family every Sunday from a payphone located on the Embarcadero."

When they didn't hear from her this Sunday, her family grew worried and asked police to investigate, saying that Uchida has a medical condition that requires medication.

Her family last spoke with her on Sunday, February 14th, and "have not heard from her since," Esparza says.

Have you seen Uchida? If so, please call SFPD's anonymous tip line at (415) 575-4444, or text a tip to TIP411 with SFPD at the beginning of the message.

Just another depressing local real estate factoid to kick off your week: According to a new census by the SRO Families United Collaborative, there's been a 55 percent uptick in the number of families, sometimes comprising four or five individuals, sharing single-room occupancy apartment units since 2001 — most of these in Chinatown. And mind you, these are often 8-by-10-foot rooms meant for single individuals, typically with shared bathrooms and kitchen facilities.

The new census, done in 2014 and released via this new report, found that the median price for an SRO unit is now $1,000 a month in SoMa, and $700 a month in Chinatown, and a majority of heads of households are immigrants who do not speak fluent English. 38 percent earn wages in the restaurant industry, while others work in hotels, janitorial services, construction, and sewing factories. And there are now 699 families living in these conditions, an increase of 249 families over the past decade.

The vast majority of families living in cramped SROs, 74 percent, are in Chinatown, with another 14 percent in the Tenderloin, with a decreasing number (2 percent) in the Mission, largely due to gentrification. 40 percent of these families consist of four or more individuals, and over 95 percent of the individuals are employed.

Living conditions, in addition to being cramped, are often illegal and disgusting. City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed suit in 2014 against one SRO landlord, the Thakor family, as KRON 4 notes. They own at least 15 SRO buildings with some 880 units where residents "were forced to endure bedbugs, roach and rodent infestations, mold and mildew, raw sewage leaks, defective wiring, and other unsafe conditions," according to the complaint. The Thakors ultimately agreed to pay $1.1 million to rectify these unlivable conditions.

Furthermore, most of these families have applied for subsidized family housing through the city, but very few have succeeded in getting it. The report says that 88 percent of the families have been on housing waiting lists for a year or more, 60 percent for three years or more, and 14 percent for over 10 years. Meanwhile, most of them (62 percent) don't have leases in their SROs, putting them at risk of displacement to make way for white-collar workers and students — to whom SROs are often being marketed, as we've seen in the Apartment Sadness column.

The report recommends that families in SROs be given greater priority on housing waiting lists, and that the city do something to halt evictions of these families and stop the conversion of SROs into student housing or tech hostels, as we've seen happening already across the city.

Related: Adding Roommates Made Easier, Evictions Made Harder After Board Of Supervisors Vote

When a Tenderloin SRO elevator door opened on an empty shaft, a blind hotel resident fell to his death, another resident tells SFist.

The San Francisco Fire Department confirmed that on August 20th at around 10:30 p.m. it responded to a call from the Hartland Hotel at 909 Geary Street. There, they discovered a blind man in his mid-50s who had fallen two-and-a-half stories and was "underneath the elevator."

The man was extricated and transported to SF General. However, the office of the Medical Examiner confirmed the death of a man matching that description — Stevie Newson of San Francisco — indicating that the accident proved fatal.

The story is reminiscent of the recent horrors at the Crosby Hotel at 516 O'Farrell Street. There, in early August, a 48-year-old man was found dead in his room of blunt-force trauma, and in April, a dead woman was found in her room almost a full two months after she died. A third body was found at the Crosby as recently as late last month.

The Hartland Hotel is owned by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. SFist has contacted the property manager at the THC in charge of the Hartland Hotel and is awaiting comment.

"I feel THC and its Hotel Manager... are sweeping this tragic death 'under the carpet,'" writes the resident who first informed SFist of the accident. "I did come in contact with this man prior to his death, coming in and out of the building and he was a very sweet person...The staff here has been instructed to be very tight lipped about this incident but I just feel that because this person was in an SRO and may or may not have had family, THC is going to hope this gets forgotten about when in fact, I feel their neglect caused this blind man's death."

The hotel desk declined to comment.

Related: Third Body In Several Months Found In The Same Tenderloin SRO, Investigation Ongoing

The Crosby Hotel, a 125-unit SRO building at 516 O'Farrell Street in the Tenderloin, has seen an arguably unusual number of deaths among its residents so far this year, and it made headlines last month after news emerged that one corpse was left to decompose in a unit for two months before it was found by building staff in April. Now, following on the potentially suspicious death in early August of 48-year-old Crosby resident Sheldon Smith, another body was discovered in the building on August 22, which the Medical Examiner's Office confirms was that of Kim Colburn.

Colburn was found in a bathtub in a friend's unit on a different floor from her own, and her death remains under investigation.

Across-the-hall neighbor Mel Malvar tells SFist that he filed an incident report with Episcopal Community Services, which manages the Crosby as well as other SROs in the neighborhood, after seeing one of Colburn's friends emerging from her room late on the night following her death. He also says he saw a friend named Charles carrying Colburn's dog Rusty following her death, and this is coincidentally the same person who cared for the dog of Julie Mann, the 56-year-old woman who died on or around February 17, but whose body, apparently concealed by belongings in her room, was not discovered by building staff until April 17.

When reached for comment on the Julie Mann situation, Episcopal Community Services Executive Director Ken Reggio told SFist, "The criticism of ECS is justly directed toward our failure to discover Ms. Mann's body in a timely way," and he says he's "apologized for [his staff's] having missed the clues that, in retrospect, were so obvious."

He explains that the staff conducted three separate well-being checks after Mann was reported missing in February, but they attributed the growing stench in her unit, which may have been kind of a hoarder situation. "Julie had many possessions, which we didn't disturb," Reggio says. "She also had a dog, and there was pet waste as well as food and garbage strewn about the unit. Staff mistakenly assumed that the odor was from those sources only."

Further he adds that the inability to discover Mann's body was an exception, and a regrettable one that ECS hopes never to repeat.

ECS serves 1,100 formerly homeless people in housing currently and we've been doing this work for 20 years. Of course, we've had deaths, but Julie's was the first that went undiscovered for any significant period of time, and it will be the last. We have tightened our well-being check protocol to include a fuller team response in cases where an overload of possessions may obscure discovery to ensure that the unit search is complete.

In the case of Sheldon Smith, while the death has not been ruled a homicide, the case remains disturbing for tenants, and Malvar goes so far as to say, "There's fear among residents because there may be a killer living with us."

Malvar, who has continued to blog and speak to journalists about the cases in an effort to bring attention to them, also says that he believes there was no guard at the front desk during one period before Smith died — a death which may or may not have occurred due to blunt force trauma. Malvar pointed to an unknown "outsider" seen by a fellow resident on surveillance footage entering the building on the afternoon of August 3 when the regular clerk on duty had left early, and a cleaning person was supposed to be covering the desk. Police say that Smith's was discovered within 24 hours of his death, however, which would put the death on August 5.

There may, in fact, be little or no foul play involved with any of these deaths, as they could all be attributable to drug or alcohol abuse. And this is not to say that the Crosby is necessarily an outlier among Tenderloin SROs when it comes to having deaths among an often addicted, often formerly homeless tenant population. But it remains a sad snapshot into the management of such a building that the unfortunate case of Julie Mann brought to the fore.

Below you can watch a short documentary made by Crosby neighbor Vinton Frost which depicts the beginning of the July meeting held by ECS with residents of the Crosby, as well as interviews with Crosby residents about the Mann's death, and the subsequent odiferous evidence of her death.

In response to the claims about lack of support services made in the video, Reggio says, "ECS staffs the Crosby with four full-time and one part-time social service personnel (in addition to property management staff), whose roles extend to providing supportive counseling, crisis counseling, and conflict resolution; providing and/or making referrals for food, clothing, and household items; referring for physical and mental health services and for substance abuse treatment; advocating with and on behalf of tenants for Social Security, SSI and other benefits; exploring and encouraging employment and/or job training opportunities; engaging residents in social activities for the development of community."

And in response to claims of lack of security, Reggio says, "Our buildings are locked and visitors must be buzzed in day or night by a desk clerk," and "The Crosby, like all of our buildings, have security cameras throughout."

He also adds, "With neither death [Mann's or Smith's] is there a question of ECS's action or inaction being a cause of death."

Expect more on this story if and when either the deaths of Smith or Colburn are ruled homicides.

Previously: Dead Bodies Keep Turning Up In Tenderloin SRO No One Should Have To Live In

The Crosby Hotel at 516 O'Farrell Street may be a case study in poorly managed, essentially neglected Tenderloin SROs. Not only was a 48-year-old man found dead in his room last week of blunt-force trauma, but there was a dead woman found in her room almost two months after she died, back in April.

As the Examiner reports, 56-year-old Julie Mann died in her room on February 17, and despite building management (which is overseen by Episcopal Community Services) conducting two welfare checks on Mann — who had apparently gone missing and whose dog was reportedly "completely freaking out" inside her room — and despite the horrid stench of her rotting corpse permeating an entire section of the building, no one located her body until April 17, 57 days later.

Management says, "This is one of those things we didn’t do right," but the entire story is fairly baffling. The body was apparently found "underneath debris, clothing and newspapers," but how could no one have suspected what that smell was?! A neighbor said he stopped using the elevator on that side of the building because of the stench.

And despite the obvious odor, and and freaking-out dog, building management just "sealed" the room (after freeing the dog) and filed a missing persons report on March 9 for Mann, who had multiple friends in the building and was usually seen by neighbors on a daily basis.

It wasn't until building employees went back into her unit to clean and reclaim it in April that the body was discovered.

Kind of makes you think that all your assumptions about the insides of most of those Tenderloin SROs are true!

The second death at the Crosby Hotel, 48-year-old Sheldon Smith's, is being investigated as a suspicious death after his body was discovered only 24 hours after he died last week. In contrast to Mann, Smith kept to himself and neighbors said they barely ever saw him.

Related: Tenderloin SRO To Become Free Housing For Ex-Cons

The Negev, a network of three commune-style SROs in SoMa that we wrote about last week, are marketed on Craigslist and a snazzy website as a paradise for young urban professionals: "Instant Friends & Community: Mostly hackers & founders." Coding sessions, parties, and college recaptured. It seemed too good to be true, and yes, it was in fact a lie. Before any of the red flags (now hoisted high by the press) were raised, I went to see the Negev Folsom, which is at 1040 Folsom Street, during a crowded open house last month.

The fact that the Negev is a converted SRO was certainly not disclosed to the group of about 30 supplicating applicants. Gathered uncomfortably in a circle in a large lobby area (with a house member and part-time DJ spinning, quietly, in a corner) the assembled group introduced themselves to a few current house members, who dropped vague descriptions of their backgrounds and careers, invoking Google and Harvard with scant elaboration.

Hoping to occupy one of the 70 total spots that house members claimed would become available, when one shy applicant took his turn, he described his job as a physical education teacher. Current house members were visibly bored and moved quickly to the next applicant who seemed a better fit with a job in the tech sector.

But the tour, not the group chats and interviews (a taped video from each applicant was also requested) was the real showstopper. I've seen some pretty cramped housing before, but nothing like this at the requested price. All quarters in the Negev looked to be under heavy construction, with about half of a giant kitchen complete.

Notably, no mention was made of the three-alarm fire which took place in May 2011 from which the Negev was born. Now, private rooms and shared living spaces are advertised at $1500 or less per month. Prison was the metaphor that came to mind (for me and other applicants I chatted with outside afterwards). In part, the comparison was sparked by sinks provided in each miniature bedroom (bathrooms at the Negev being few and equally small).

Danny Haber, 26, and Alon Gutman, 27, are the cofounders of The Negev Properties LLC (Gutman was present to lead the tour on the evening in question) and the two were presumably in stealth mode about the renovations of what was once The Park Hotel. Then, earlier this month, the Examiner broke the news that the Negev's 1040 Folsom location had allegedly displaced six former tenants of the building, who under San Francisco's rent control ordinance were entitled to re-occupy the building within 30 days of the post-fire repairs being complete. Adding insult to injury, Haber allegedly attempted to bribe a former tenant, 63-year-old Patricia Kirkbride, with a paltry $500 to forget about her past home.

Today, the news centered on the Negev's other location at 219 6th Street. Here, the Examiner reports a complaint detailing a horror show of abuses: One former resident cited an inoperable heater, faulty electrical wiring, no deadbolts on some doors, a faulty fire escape and smoke detectors, no secure mail receptacle, cockroaches and mice, no hot water, a consistent odor of gas from a broken water heater, and 60 people living in a place with a 22-person occupancy limit. The complaint also alleges that residents were bullied into spending their own time and money to fix house problems. Prior to its incarnation as The Negev Sixth, the building was the San Francisco Gospel Mission, a nonprofit, Baptist mission for the homeless.

Today, founders Gutman and Haber are expected to take part in an audit of records for the past two years to determine whether the Negev is in compliance and up to code. The City's Department of Building Inspection, which has been on the Negev's case, will also investigate whether construction work was done without proper permits, and a department official tells the Examiner that up to 25 rooms might have been counted in a space that can at most have 19. And isn't it illegal to be moving people into a place that's under construction?

When I ran into two house members I recognized from the Negev last weekend at a party, I asked them how things were panning out at the like-minded hub. Expecting complaints or disappointment from them about the Negev's leadership, I heard instead the claim that no one would be moving out. Everything was under control, they said. In fact, they informed me, the complaining former SRO tenants had been rounded up by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic who were itching for a fight.

I spoke briefly on the phone with Gutman and Haber, who declined to comment until "some time next week."

A Department of Building Inspection hearing about the living conditions at the Negev Sixth Street is scheduled for December 4th.

Previously: SoMa SRO Damaged In 2011 Fire Illegally Turned Into Tech Worker Co-Op

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