Suit calls S.F. housing head bully, racist

The San Francisco Housing Authority, which runs more than 6,000 units of public housing for the city's poor, is headed by an executive director who discriminates against white employees in favor of African Americans and regularly employs offensive, outlandish language and behavior in the workplace, according to a lawsuit filed by the agency's own lawyer.

The suit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court by the agency's assistant general counsel, Tim Larsen, paints executive director Henry Alvarez as a mercurial bully - a description echoed in interviews with The Chronicle by several others who have had close contact with Alvarez since his arrival at the Housing Authority in 2008.

Alvarez was recruited by Mayor Ed Lee, who was the city administrator at the time, from the Housing Authority in San Antonio to lead an agency that has had a series of leaders ousted or scrutinized. During Alvarez's tenure, the agency's federal scorecard has gotten worse, and housing advocates say Alvarez's leadership hurts those who need housing the most.

Lee defended Alvarez, though he was unaware that the director was being sued or of the complaints others have lodged against him. The mayor said that Alvarez has "one of the toughest jobs" in the city, and that he stands by his choice.

"I don't get into personnel matters," Lee said. "But I am familiar with every Housing Authority (director) being called a bully. I've been called a bully, and I don't think I am."

Larsen, who is white, has worked at the Housing Authority for eight years and says that he was repeatedly passed over for promotions and plum assignments in favor of African American employees.

Alvarez is African American, and according to Larsen's lawsuit, screamed at Larsen daily; gave him menial jobs such as organizing recycling; and told him to "stop being so Anglo," that he "did not have enough kink in his hair," and that "if you had more melatonin in your skin, I could make you my deputy."

(The lawsuit states that Alvarez seemed to have meant melanin, which gives skin its pigment, rather than melatonin, which regulates sleep cycles.)

Alvarez declined to speak to The Chronicle for this story. Rose Dennis, the spokeswoman for the Housing Authority, said, "Our position is that it's a personnel matter and that it's confidential. We have no comment on the case."

Larsen also declined interview requests.

Amos Brown, president of the Housing Authority Commission, staunchly defended Alvarez, saying Larsen's lawsuit "is not about Henry."

"You have someone who's white, someone with specious, fallacious allegations, filing a suit that he was discriminated against," said Brown, who is African American. "It's a joke. How can he be discriminated against?"

He also said Alvarez inherited an agency "in trouble, in shambles" and has helped to right it. However, federal inspectors' annual scores paint a different picture. They are based on a scale of 100, with anything less than 60 considered troubled.

In 2009, the first full year under Alvarez, the agency scored a 76. In 2010, it scored a 75. Last year, it scored a 63 and was dinged in particular for "substandard management," according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Sara Shortt, executive director of the Housing Rights Committee, which advocates on behalf of tenants, said she has been personally yelled at, cursed at and bullied by Alvarez, but that she can handle it.

"If you're a tenant and you're afraid of what this guy's going to do to you, including eviction, he does not give the sense that he's going to be reasonable and compassionate," she said. "It's just the opposite."

Alvarez serves at the pleasure of the Housing Authority Commission, whose seven members are appointed by the mayor. He makes $210,500 annually and receives a car and 35 annual days of vacation and sick time.

Under his contract, which expires in June, the Housing Authority pays both its share and Alvarez's share of his pension contributions and paid $6,300 for him to attend the Harvard Executive Skill Development Program.

The San Francisco Housing Authority operates 6,476 units of low-income housing at 45 public housing projects around the city. It also runs the Section 8 voucher program, which currently gives 9,577 vouchers to low-income people to subsidize their rents in private apartments.

The agency is funded by the federal government, but City Hall has recently taken a greater interest in it as it develops a program to leverage city funds to help rebuild the most beleaguered developments.

The agency has had a string of problematic leaders. Ronnie Davis, appointed by then-Mayor Willie Brown, pleaded guilty in 2001 to wrongdoing in his previous job at the Cleveland Housing Authority. Davis was not charged with illegal activity in San Francisco, but federal auditors repeatedly criticized the agency under his tenure.

His replacement, Gregg Fortner, was pushed out by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2007 over dismal living conditions in some developments and Fortner's inability to resolve several lawsuits against the agency, including one over a fatal fire that killed a grandmother and five children.

Newsom appointed a team, led by Lee, to find a replacement - and after a national search, the group picked Alvarez.

Alvarez was not without controversy in San Antonio, including an "inappropriate outburst" at a member of his executive team, according to the San Antonio Express-News. The employee filed a grievance against Alvarez, saying he retaliated against her, questioned her professional conduct and excluded her from essential meetings.

The chairman of the San Antonio Housing Authority commission publicly reprimanded Alvarez, warning him to "refrain from engaging in any inappropriate conduct" or face being fired.

Lee told The Chronicle in a recent interview, "Yes, we were aware of everything." The mayor said he chose Alvarez for his independence and accomplishments in San Antonio and said he admires the work he's done in San Francisco.

"I am surprised to hear there are lawsuits pending," Lee said. "I will probably have a session with the Housing Authority director. ... I'll make that a point to see what's going on."

Larsen's suit names Alvarez and the Housing Authority as defendants. It details several examples of Alvarez's favoring minorities, and African Americans in particular, over white employees. The suit says Alvarez referred to himself as "one smart Negro" and that he said, "In San Antonio, I could not lay off any Hispanics, here I cannot lay off any blacks!"

In September, according to the suit, Alvarez made it clear he would cope with a budget shortfall by laying off white employees in the legal department. Larsen found a way to save $850,000 by tweaking the agency's property insurance agreement, but Alvarez continued with his layoff plan.

Larsen then complained to "various individuals active in city government" after which Alvarez stopped speaking to him and launched an effort to fire him, according to the suit. Larsen went out on medical leave related to stress in October.

He is suing Alvarez and the Housing Authority for what could amount to a substantial sum, including for back pay, emotional distress, attorney fees and punitive damages against Alvarez "to punish him for his wrongful conduct and to set an example for others."

The Housing Authority has not yet responded to the lawsuit, which was filed late last month.

Larsen's lawsuit against Alvarez and the Housing Authority isn't the only example of questionable behavior by Alvarez, according to several people familiar with his tenure in San Francisco.

Nicole Collier was a program manager for the Section 8 voucher program for 2 1/2 years before Alvarez laid her off in March 2010. She said that upon his arrival, he was "intimidating people, having people running scared."

She said that she once tried to revoke a Section 8 voucher, but that Alvarez told her she had to reinstate it because the recipient was a member of the Third Baptist Church, headed by Housing Authority Commission president Amos Brown, a prominent pastor - even though she said the woman was known to keep a gun and drug paraphernalia in the home.

"I'll never forget that case - I was just so disgusted," Collier said.

Brown said his parishioners don't receive any special treatment.

Collier, now director of a fair housing nonprofit in Napa, is African American and said she didn't see Alvarez as racist, but did think he was moody and unpredictable. She said Alvarez laid her off shortly after she returned from a bereavement leave after two family members died days apart.

"I was let go because he basically questioned my loyalty to him," she said.

Minouche Kandel, a lawyer for Bay Area Legal Aid, said she's been working with the Housing Authority for years to make it easier for victims of domestic violence who live in public housing to be transferred to units away from their abusers.

She said Alvarez has repeatedly canceled meetings or sent underlings who would promise changes, but then report back that Alvarez told them no.

"I often had clients who would tell me they were being discriminated against by the Housing Authority, but often there was so much incompetence there that it was difficult to tell whether they're discriminating against a particular person or they're just incompetent and awful and hostile to everybody," Kandel said.

Shortt experienced that hostility after her organization, the Housing Rights Committee, filed a public records request with the Housing Authority last year seeking information related to tenants' complaints about repairs.

The next day, Alvarez filed his own public records requests with the Mayor's Office of Housing that "intended to uncover problems with the nonprofit and provide grounds for ending city funding," according to the blog CitiReport, which obtained relevant e-mails. Doug Shoemaker, then director of the Mayor's Office of Housing, wrote to Alvarez that eliminating city funding for the Housing Rights Committee was "not politically possible."

"You and I have spent a lot of time developing a good working relationship and it seems like we're about to blow it up," Shoemaker wrote to Alvarez.

Alvarez persisted, sending numerous requests about the Housing Rights Committee to other city agencies, and then demanded that Shortt and her staff not conduct business at any Housing Authority property without his consent.

Dennis, the spokeswoman for the Housing Authority, said she was aware of all of these complaints against Alvarez.

"They're entitled to their First Amendment rights," she said. "We can't speak to their positions."

Shortt said the mayor needs to do more to ensure that all members of what he calls "the city family" are professional.

"The administration has finally claimed the Housing Authority as part of the city family, which is good," she said. "The problem is they are now stuck with the type of embarrassing, unpredictable relative that most families have."