Even though they’d been paying rent, tenants of some 40 units at Potrero Annex are facing eviction proceedings, because they’d been paying rent to a rogue manager who was allegedly just pocketing the money.

The 54-building public housing complex called Potrero Terrace and Annex is planning a grand makeover with many new units, but the remodel has taken a few unexpected detours. Mission Local has been reporting the heck out of this — first when a January 2023 fire there was believed to have been caused by squatters staying in empty units slated for demolition, and then later that year when a city audit found that the property’s management company Eugene Burger Management Corporation was completely ignoring repair and maintenance requests.

But things took an even crazier turn in April, when Mission Local reported a Eugene Burger property manager was illegally renting out units for under-the-table cash payments at Potrero Terrace and Annex. That manager has been identified as Eugene Burger senior property manager Lance Whittenberg. The tenants had no idea that he was pocketing the cash, and they were squatting illegally.

Mission Local noted that the evictions started in August, when three tenants were forced out of their units. And the Chronicle reports that several more evictions are scheduled for Wednesday, with tenants from a total of “about 40” units facing eviction proceedings, even though they had been paying rent to Whittenberg and were unaware they were residing there illegally.

“He was the boss of the housing, the one calling all the shots. He had painters, plumbers. If somebody said, ‘Hey Lance, my sink clogged up.’ He’d be back at the office and send the workers to get it fixed,” Steven Williams, a tenant slated for eviction, told the Chronicle. “I never knew I wasn’t supposed to be in there until recently when they started trying to kick everybody out. And my name was on the list.”

Some of the tenants do have lawyers lined up, through the city’s Tenant Right to Counsel Program.

“Our clients are asylum seekers, working families, elderly people, and disabled children,” an attorney for that program said in a letter to the SF Housing Authority, urging a pause on these evictions. “They have lived in Potrero Hill Terrace-Annex for years and paid rent to disgraced San Francisco Housing Authority property managers who promised safe and affordable housing and instead engaged in a conspiracy to defraud our clients.”

These cases are still making their way through the courts, but may not be resolved before the tenants themselves are served eviction papers. The Chronicle reports that the Eugene Burger property manager Lance Whittenberg “was fired at the start of the year,” and thus has not been collecting that rent on these units since. But it seems pretty heartbreaking that the only people who seem to currently be suffering any consequences from this scheme are the tenants, rather than the city or the property company they hired.

The redevelopment of Potrero Annex-Terrace, called Potrero Hope SF, has been ongoing for the last decade, with the first phases of new construction opened for habitation in 2019 and 2022. When completed, the project will include 1,700 residential units — 619 replacement affordable units, approximately 200 additional affordable housing units, and approximately 800 market-rate units.

The entire project is slated to completed by 2034.

Related: Potrero Hill Apartment Fire Leaves One Dead, Three Rescued [SFist]

Image via Google Street View