If You See These Flyers In The TL/SOMA, Rip Them Down

A few days ago, I saw one of those lame flyers for the Central City SRO Collaborative on a pole in the Tenderloin and ripped them down.

Why did I do this, and why do I encourage others to do this when they see them?

Imagine for a second a mega-landlord like Veritas ran fake tenants rights groups and San Francisco's city government funded it. There would be outrage for days, and understandably so. However, several non-profit landlords have been getting city funds to create astroturf tenant groups for a quarter century, and nothing has been done.

The SRO Collaboratives are a project of the Department of Building Inspection ostensibly to help SRO tenants assert their rights. Although DBI is the main funder, the issues the collaboratives take on relate to Department of Public Health, Rent Board, Homelessness & Supportive Housing, Adult Protective Services, Fire Department, etc.

However, the entities that receive these contracts are non-profit SRO landlords. The most egregious is the Central City SRO Collaborative, funded through permanent supportive housing provider Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which has had a long history of union-busting and mistreatment of workers and where conditions in hotels were so poor that they were a main character in the 2022 "Broken Homes" expose from the Chronicle.

The collaborative, run by Pratibha "Techie" Tekky and Clifford "Big Daddy" Gilmore at the behest of THC, hires THC tenants to organize their buildings, several tenants have had nightmare stories about the secretive application process, and they seem to hire those tenants, not for their organizing abilities, but for their ability to tow the line for THC ED and conservative power player Randy Shaw. In fact, a tenant leader had a petition with the vast majority of tenants in his THC building calling for them to be the new tenant organizer, but Central City SRO Collaborative refused to hire them, they would rather keep tenant positions open for months and maybe years rather than have a tenant who would hold THC accountable, and that hurts all tenants.

This has had material consequences. For the last few years of the SRO Task Force's existence, the meetings were audio recorded, and the public can hear for the first time the conflicts of CCSROC in real time, with Big Daddy Gilmore and several fake "tenant organizers" (like conservative cowboy Dan Jordan) pooh poohing everything from getting rents down to 30% of income in all PSH SROs (a successful campaign supported by tenants themselves, every low income tenants rights organization except CCSRO, the unionized workers at THC buildings, and every PSH provider except for THC) to expanding the grab bar ordinance. The SRO Task Force died before the pandemic, but the SRO Collaboratives still live on.

In 2019, then Supervisor Matt Haney visited the Hartland Hotel to meet with tenants. One of the tenant toadies, Kathy Vaughan, told tenants that "the Supervisor does not want to hear about issues about whats going inside the building" and to talk about public safety issues in the neighborhood, which is odd for a rep in an organization that is specifically funded for code enforcement in SRO buildings. As former DA Chesa Boudin took office and desired to use his office to go after landlords, Central City never met with him, but when he was recalled, his successor and recall supporter Brooke Jenkins met with Central City over open air drug markets in the neighborhood. If you are using city funding earmarked to help tenants partner with the city on code enforcement/housing issues for issues outside of housing, no matter what you may think, there is a term for that, and it is called embezzlement. But of course, I don't expect Brooke Jenkins to do anything about it.

I happen to know that they are also steering tenants to support Dorsey's drug free permanent supportive housing ordinance. While most tenants oppose it as written (we support drug free/recovery options with a just transition for those who relapse, but not the bans on new low barrier PSH) and another PSH provider polled its tenants on the issue, Central City is trying to, at the behest of THC, manufacture consent for this issue.

In 2022, shortly after "Broken Homes" came out, Supervisor Hillary Ronen questioned DBI about the SRO Collaborative conflicts of interest, but nothing was done. In 2023 and 2025, funding for the collaboratives were threatened, but instead of making meaningful reforms, budget justice advocates reflexively supported reinstating funding without considering the issues that SRO tenants have been raising for years.

In fact, back in 2022, when the Broke Homes series was coming out, Joaquin Palomino and Trisha Thadani were planning on doing an expose of the SRO Collaboratives, but the Chronicle editorial team kiboshed it and instead ran a story on overdoses that is still being weaponized against harm reduction.

So, its time to fight fire with fire. I do not encourage vandalism, but maybe its time for people who see these flyers in the wild to strip them off the poles or any other PUBLIC PROPERTY. This is basically the equivalent of removing flyers about goat testicles or horse dewormer as cures, they are shams and so is the Central City SRO Collaborative. It is a waste of taxpayer dollars for PSH/SRO landlords to get their own PR operation under color of tenant empowerment. Either separate the SRO collaboratives from landlords and democratize them, or just shut them down altogether.

If you are an SRO or PSH tenant who is having problems in their building, just contact the Housing Rights Committee, or if they are being evicted, contact the Eviction Defense Collaborative.

Also, if you wish to see more of the conflicts of interest of the SRO collaboratives, follow @sfpshsro on Instagram.