HomeRise accused of hiding resident rape, advocates seek funding cut
HomeRise kept a case manager on duty after learning he allegedly raped a resident, then failed to alert police or city regulators. Advocates want HUD to cut funding.
HomeRise kept a case manager on the job after learning he allegedly raped a resident, and the San Francisco nonprofit did not report the incident to police or city regulators. Advocates are now pressing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to cut funding to the organization, which runs close to one-third of all city-funded apartments for formerly homeless San Franciscans.
The episode lands in a system already under strain. In April 2024, the San Francisco Controller’s Office said HomeRise had serious financial and compliance problems, and the city moved the nonprofit from Elevated Concern to Red Flag status. City officials said they had been working with HomeRise leadership on corrective action since at least an August 2021 letter, after discrepancies surfaced again in June 2021.
HomeRise’s Mission Bay site has become one of the clearest examples of the strain. The 144-unit supportive housing building opened in 2022, and at a March 2024 public hearing neighbors described hundreds of police calls tied to behavior there. HomeRise CEO Janéa Jackson said about 3 percent of Mission Bay residents had more acute mental health needs and behaviors that created serious nuisance impacts, a small share that still proved difficult for the building to absorb.
The troubles have not stopped at Mission Bay. In a separate case involving resident Eric McCain, who was found dead in a HomeRise unit for days unnoticed, the city attorney launched an investigation and placed the organization under the highest level of monitoring the city uses. That scrutiny has deepened concern about whether the nonprofit can safely manage vulnerable residents across its portfolio.
San Francisco has more than 13,000 units of subsidized permanent supportive housing, and advocates say buildings can be overwhelmed when even a small group of residents needs a higher level of care than the site can provide. HomeRise’s collapse of safeguards now sits at the center of a larger city question: whether public money is flowing to providers that protect their reputations more aggressively than the people living inside their buildings.
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