When Silvio Ocampo testifies in court against his landlord and property manager next year, he might still have mold under the carpet of his Plaza East apartment, and sewage seeping through the floorboards, though he hopes not — he’s developed a rash on his hands and arms, and has had difficulty breathing.
But one thing will be different: Plaza East’s property manager, the John Stewart Company, will be gone. The firm is the largest affordable housing manager in California — managing 283 properties across the state, and 41 in San Francisco. It’s overseen the Western Addition complex since 2021, after stepping in for the owner after tenants sued.
But now, it’s leaving.
The John Stewart Company declined to say why, but a lawsuit filed by 28 tenants against the company is ongoing. It alleges harassment, charging rent for uninhabitable living conditions, and negligence — for which, tenants are seeking unlimited damages, meaning the judge would decide how much, if anything, to award.
Most immediately, residents of the complex’s 193 units would like to see a new manager at work. But they aren’t hopeful.
“More of the same,” said Dennis Williams, a resident at Plaza East, when asked what changes he’s expecting when the current property manager departs at the end of the month.
In June, tenants received a letter sent by the San Francisco Housing Authority announcing the company had provided notice it would be leaving the property. “We are currently in discussions with a potential property management company,” read the letter signed by Housing Authority CEO Tonia Lediju.
It’s not the first time the property manager has been replaced after tenants filed a lawsuit. In 2021, 18 tenants, including Williams, sued McCormack Baron Salazar, the property’s current owner, which at the time, also managed Plaza East. McCormack Baron Salazar hired the John Stewart Company after that lawsuit was settled, but Ocampo says things only got worse.
He’s one of the 28 more tenants who decided to file suit again, just two years later.
What’s it like living at Plaza East?
Once known as “Outta Control,” the former home of Mayor London Breed has, on the surface, changed dramatically since the towering public housing projects first built in 1954 were torn down. Those were replaced with townhomes in 2001, intended for those making well below San Francisco’s median income.
The change transferred ownership and management of Plaza East from the Housing Authority to a private firm, and was intended to improve life for public housing residents.
But tenants say that the violence and negligence that was characteristic of the “Outta Control” Plaza East Towers, is still there. The cycle of poor property management has left walls and doors covered in a black film of mold. Pipes are broken. Sewage seeps into the carpet.
The bullet holes marking a handful of windows and Ocampo’s car show not only a disinclination towards repair, he said, but a lack of interest in adequate security.
“It’s under the floor,” said Ocampo of his unit’s mold, grimacing. “It doesn’t go away.” Work crews come in and paint over anything that looks moldy, he said. Sometimes, they clean the mold sprouting from the surfaces of his unit. But it always comes back, with a vengeance.
Moreover, Williams says tenants feel “like prisoners” because of the violence outside their doors — trapped in units that have become infested with mold.
While the Plaza East Towers hid crime inside the long stairwells and alleyways between buildings, residents at Plaza East say gun violence and drug dealing persists in the open air — mostly, in the parking lot on Larch Way outside Ocampo’s home.
Ocampo’s car, which sits in the parking lot, has been hit by a bullet before, and a neighbor recently found a bullet in his car. On the weekends and at night, he says, the parking lot begins to fill with people, who Ocampo says do not live at the building.
In years prior, stickers verifying residency at Plaza East were required to enter the parking lot. Ever since the John Stewart Company was hired, says Ocampo, that rule was abandoned.
“My family is scared to leave the house,” says Ocampo, whose wife and brother sat on the couch in his home. His brother lives next door to him. As Ocampo walked through the parking lot outside, he pointed to a bullet-sized hole on his brother’s window-frame.
Gun violence in San Francisco reached a 60-year low last year. But those who filed the lawsuit say that at Plaza East, it’s a constant threat. The last death was four months ago, after a man was shot at the complex in the early morning on March 2, 2025.
Ocampo says he has called security multiple times, but often, after 6 p.m., guards are nowhere to be found. He says he’s stopped calling — he doesn’t want to be a nuisance, and he’s worried about retaliation.
He’s complained about his apartment numerous times before, but when he brought his concerns to a staff member, he says he was told, “‘Remember where you are.’” Ocampo shook his head, “But no one deserves to live like this.”
Former public housing tenants fed up
When he first moved to Plaza East in 2006, Ocampo’s apartment was only five years old. He remembers conditions at the building started to worsen five years after he moved in, in 2011.
McCormack Baron Salazar has long held plans to tear down Plaza East again and replace it with high-density mixed-income development, which tenants have opposed. So far, those plans have stalled. Last year, Strada Investment Group exited the project without explanation.
To get the property up to code, McCormack Baron Salazar was granted an emergency loan of $2.7 million in 2021, and this year, the Housing Authority granted $10 million in capital improvements to Plaza East for “exterior painting.”
Plaza East is not the only redeveloped public housing project where tenants have concerns. Mission Local has documented poor conditions for which tenants fault property management at the Potrero Terrace-Annex, the Thomas Paine Apartments in Fillmore, and the Alice Griffith Apartments in Bayview.
Just this week, tenants from 10 subsidized housing programs delivered a letter to Mayor Daniel Lurie listing their complaints ranging from asbestos, broken elevators, to apartments overrun with pests, and demanding a meeting.
Since then, the mayor’s office has scheduled multiple tours this month and next of the troubled housing complexes.
But for now, all tenants can do is wait and hope that one of these visits will come to something. Ocampo, for his part, is anxious to sit behind the witness stand. Williams is less optimistic.
He says he’s watched his neighbors move because of housing conditions at Plaza East, only to again wind up in apartments managed by just a handful of private firms specializing in affordable housing in San Francisco: The John Stewart Company, McCormack Baron Salazar, and Related California. Many have left the city.
“You have no other recourse,” said Williams. “Your only choice is to move.”
