by Griffin Jones
On Thursday, Aug. 14, Hunters Point resident Chyna Smith found herself locked inside her unit at LaSalle Apartments just a few days after moving back in. Smith is in her final trimester of pregnancy. That morning, she was headed to a doctor’s appointment.
She twisted the knob of her gate again and again, flipped the locks back and forth. No matter what, the door wouldn’t open. She dialed maintenance — no response. So she called 911. An hour later, the fire department pried the door open. Footage viewed by the Bay View shows a firefighter explaining that the lock was not properly installed, and one of its screws was stripped.
For Smith, that was just the cherry on top. In the month she was gone, thousands of dollars of her own approved renovation work on her apartment was destroyed — including a stove, a walk-in tub and custom cabinetry.
Track lighting she’d added last year was removed in the renovation. Now, the light in her home split the difference between dim and fluorescent. Despite following Related Companies’ protocol for marking items not to be touched, none of her work remained.
“Why do we have to be in the dark?” Smith asked, holding her belly as her baby kicked. “We don’t deserve anything but a switch light? It’s like they’re telling us, ‘Don’t dream too big here.’”
Smith along with hundreds of neighbors were relocated earlier this year during an extensive, long fought for renovation across four major Hunters Point complexes managed by Related Companies: Shoreview, All Hallows, LaSalle and Bayview Apartments. The complexes together hold 600-odd federally subsidized units and more than 800 people. All sit on the south-facing side of the hill. Each renovation nets Related millions in tax credits.
As of the publishing of this article, Related Companies has not returned multiple requests for comment.
Around the corner, longtime resident CT returned to her apartment in Hunters Point to unpack the mountain of boxes in her living room. It was Aug. 12, and her family had been away for a month while LaSalle Apartments were being renovated.
Downstairs, movers set up the family’s beds. When they left, CT did a scan. Her daughter’s room had no bed and no mattress.
“I ran out to catch [the movers],” she said. “When I asked where was the bed they took away, they told me they ‘don’t know; it didn’t make it back,’ and walked off.” Another mover told her he was instructed to throw the mattress and bed frame out.
CT’s daughter, a student at Lowell High School, has been sleeping on the floor since. Lowell is on the other side of the city from Hunters Point — a commute that can take up to an hour. With 7:30 a.m. classes, the 15-year-old is entering the school year exhausted. Despite multiple calls and emails to property manager Related Companies, CT has not received a new mattress or money to replace the old one.
As she spoke with the SF Bay View on Monday, Aug 18, CT pulled a cord on the blinds for the sliding back door. The cord didn’t work. She patted the chalky white paint on the walls, which was already collecting streaks.
“It’s a rush job,” said CT, shaking her head. “It’s a short turnaround to fix up units that haven’t been touched in years.”
Her words would be echoed by residents all over the hill in Hunters Point Tuesday afternoon, when a group of LaSalle, Shoreview, All Hallows and Bayview Apartments residents led Mayor Daniel Lurie and Chief of Community Affairs EJ Jones through a tour of the complexes.
The visit was set up a group of longtime Shoreview residents and tenant organizers that include Maika Pinkston, Janice Smith and Belinda Smith. Community leaders from Double Rock and Plaza East in Fillmore came out to lend support, cementing a citywide coalition that has been building power over the past two years.
Mayor Lurie toured homes where new appliances had caught fire, mildew persisted, and, in one case, a window was missing.
TM, a longtime LaSalle resident watching the tour, showed the Bay View cracking edges of new stairs and a detached threshold only weeks old. She was pretty sure the paint used was primer. She had a neighbor paint over it with gloss.
Maxey has taken up a case with Open Door Legal, a local nonprofit. A staffer at Open Door confirmed with the Bay View that a number of residents had come to them with complaints.
In fall 2024, when construction started, residents were hopeful but wary: in Hunters Point, history tends to repeat itself. These complexes have now been rebuilt three times in 60 years.
The first housing on the hill was built by the U.S. Navy in the 1940s as temporary apartments for shipyard workers. Only a few years later, the buildings were condemned, although hundreds of families continued living there.
In the 1970s, community organizers and Hunters Point residents known as the Big 5 — Elouise Westbrook, Ruth Williams, Rosie Lee Williams, Osceola Washington, Julia Commer, and others — successfully fought for $40 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to replace the old Navy housing. HUD funds and regulates affordable housing across the country. But those hard-won homes soon fell into disrepair.
When Apartment and Investment Management Co. (AIMCO) acquired the dilapidated complexes in 1990, they continued the trend. Code violations and resident complaints racked up over the years until City Attorney Dennis Herrera intervened. Even so, AIMCO’s much anticipated 2007 renovation did little to make up for those decades of neglect. Only a few years after the nearly $100 million renovation, all four complexes were once more beset by pests, mold and flooding. The property was sold to Related Companies in 2018. It continued to deteriorate.
Fast forward to 2025: The return home has many saying that this renovation is more of the same. Since May, dozens of residents have reached out to the SF Bay View alleging shoddy work.
At Shoreview Apartments this afternoon, lifelong resident Tory Carpenter took a break from detailing a car. He noted that “every single tenant” is complaining about the renovation work. He took his unit on Espanola Drive as an example.
“I’m a union painter, Local 913,” said Carpenter. He had worked on the 2007 renovations under AIMCO. By his estimation, those renovations worked better. “That job was union. This one isn’t. They’re using the cheapest labor and cheapest materials.”
A painter, Carpenter confirmed that the paint used in renovations was cheap, likely a single coat. “You gotta put satin, eggshell or semigloss on the walls. That way you can wipe anything off the wall. This is flat paint. That’s basically a primer coat.”
“Our bathrooms don’t have ventilation — no windows. We had our old windows for a month after we came back. They still don’t have screens on them.”
Carpenter pointed to gaps between the front door and the threshold: “There’s air coming through,” causing a constant breeze inside, he said.
A short walk down Ingalls is Whitfield Court. On Whitfield, resident Mariah Helton returned to her Whitfield apartment in early August. She was met with a slab of purple wood screwed over a massive hole where her living room window used to be — and no explanation. No light came into the room. Nobody had warned her she’d be without that window for the foreseeable future.
As Helton led the Bay View down her street on Monday, an elderly woman returned to her unit next door after her relocation. She was told by a worker to stay outside. “It’s flooding in there,” he said. She threw up her hands and walked back to the car.
Griffin Jones is a freelance journalist based in San Francisco. She specializes in reporting on housing, discrimination, and criminal justice. Her work has appeared in the SF Standard, SF Bay View, Mission Local, and Hyperallergic. Griffin was born and raised in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood.
