"I'm so glad you've come," says a voice at the top of the stairs. "As you can see, things are in quite a state."
It's a pleasant voice. Ora Nance Lewis has the unmistakably precise speech of a schoolteacher and the polite formality of a Southern gentlewoman. Elegant and understated at once, she has a stand-up-straight frame that makes her seem slightly taller than her average height. "May I offer you something to drink?" she asks, then adds this, in apologetic tones: "You'll have to forgive me, my hearing is on the bum."
That Lewis would apologize for anything connected to her situation is absurd. She wears her age so well it's hard to remember that she's seen 86 years. And even in the middle of what seems like a never-ending construction project, her home is immaculately clean; the good towels are even out in the bathroom.
The past two years, however, have been enough to test the stamina and confidence of anyone.
"I'm going to have to ask you to talk to my daughter about this," Lewis continues. "I'm afraid I just don't have the strength to deal with it."
By all rights, Ora Nance Lewis shouldn't be dealing with "it" at all. She should be nestled comfortably in her home on Lincoln Way, near 18th Avenue, across the street from Golden Gate Park. It is a home that has belonged to her family for four decades.
The home should be fully refurbished, courtesy of a loan program administered by the Mayor's Office of Housing and designed to help people just like Ora Nance Lewis.
But more than two years after Lewis carefully filled out the paperwork to begin the rehabilitation of her home, she has an unfinished house with a $33,000 contractor's lien slapped against it. During the past two years, as the government "helped" her repair her home, these things happened:
The roof of Lewis' house fell in, bringing birds and rain with it, and was not fixed for months;
A construction contractor tore off the back of the home without a permit;
The basement flooded, ruining irreplaceable family pictures and other belongings that workmen had moved there;
Firemen twice had to stop the place from burning down;
The hot water and heat were shut off for months; and
The dignified octogenarian named Ora Lewis was relegated to living in a downstairs drawing room.
Over the last couple of years, no less than 10 managers and administrators have laid hands on the effort to refurbish Lewis' home. None has managed to fix or finish the project or take any meaningful punitive action against the contractor.
Meanwhile, Ora Nance Lewis wakes up every day in the mess they all have caused, and apologizes for their incompetence whenever visitors arrive.
In 1957, Ora's sister Goldie Nance did something virtually unthinkable for a single African-American woman of that era: She bought her own home.
Nance had moved into the downstairs unit of the residence at 1645 Lincoln Way back in 1949, after she followed her brother from Texas to California. Another sister, Anita Nance, who was a nurse, came to San Francisco from Chicago at about the same time. When the owner of the house found himself in foreclosure, Goldie scraped together everything she had and bought what would become a sort of Nance family headquarters during the next 40 years. (Goldie was a cosmetologist who coiffed San Franciscans alive and dead; extra money made in the back rooms of mortuaries helped pay for the house.)
After Goldie bought the place, Anita continued to live in the downstairs unit. The third of the Nance sisters, Ora Nance Lewis, was busy with a family and career of her own in the Deep South. Ora became a teacher in 1935, and quickly ascended to take charge of the schools that educated African-American children in Terrebonne Parish, near Baton Rouge, La. She married and had two children, and the family later moved to Mississippi. But on vacations, they would come to stay with "Aunt Goldie" in California.
In the summer of 1961, Ora's two then-teen-age children -- Teryl and Nathaniel -- wanted to be a part of the excitement of San Francisco. Ora came along for the first year or so, seeing her children through a last year of high school and into college, but went back to Mississippi to teach again. Still, she made periodic trips to the house on Lincoln Way.
During the following two decades, various generations of the Nance/Lewis clan moved in and out of the house on Lincoln Way, often at troubled moments between chapters in their lives. The divorced were consoled, disturbed teen-agers were straightened out, children were raised, and adults started over, all under the guidance of the sisters.
In 1981, Ora moved to San Francisco for good to live with Anita, Goldie, and Baron, the German schnauzer she spoiled nearly as much as the children in her family.
"On weekends, all of the kids would come over here," Teryl laughs. "She could have as many as six kids packed in a car on the way to Sunday school."
Shortly after making the house on Lincoln Way a permanent residence, Ora completed a degree in library science. She volunteered in classrooms, chaperoned field trips, and helped to create the library at nearby Ulloa Elementary School. Ora also helped found a library in the pediatrics wing of San Francisco General Hospital and regularly read to children there.
As the 1980s neared a close, however, Ora's long battle with heart disease forced a halt to much of her volunteer work. She would have to confine her activity to running the household of the three Nance sisters on Lincoln Way.
The three gradually became one.
Anita left in 1993 to be near her grandchildren in Modesto.
Goldie died the following year.
Ora is the last of the sisters on Lincoln Way, but she's not alone. In fact, four generations of the family are currently housed there -- Ora, her daughter, her granddaughter, and her great-grandson all live in the two-flat building. "Aunt Goldie" would have approved of the arrangement, but not of the nightmare that has consumed the home on Lincoln Way.
Under what is known as the Community Housing Rehabilitation Program, the federal government provides money to cities for the repair of worn-out homes owned by senior citizens. In theory, the program provides loans and management expertise to elderly people who have difficulty accessing standard financing and overseeing the complexities of home refurbishment projects.
In San Francisco, the Mayor's Office of Housing is charged with administering this federal loan program. This office, in turn, contracts with nonprofit agencies that manage the rehab projects.
Each of those projects is supposed to last about six months, from beginning to end. Ora Nance Lewis' home rehabilitation has been under way for more than two years, and there is literally no telling when -- or if -- construction will ever end.
Lewis contacted the Mayor's Office of Housing in March 1994 to begin a process that she thought would fix her housing problems. Her loan request was assigned to the Housing Conservation and Development Corp. (HCDC), a nonprofit housing agency.
More than a year later, work on the house hadn't begun yet, even though the residence on Lincoln Way had been in bad condition to begin with, and was deteriorating rapidly.
Pacific Gas & Electric had issued warnings that the furnace was leaking gas and had to be replaced. The main floor of the house no longer had heat or running water. Lewis' family had been forced to configure a makeshift bedroom for her in the living room of the downstairs unit. There was a roof leak in the upstairs kitchen that, as bureaucrats puttered, grew to a hole large enough to let pigeons fly inside. The upstairs leaks let in water that caused a good portion of the downstairs kitchen ceiling to cave in, too.
In July 1995 -- a mere 16 months after Lewis first sought help -- the nonprofit HCDC suggested that the project might be speeded up if Lewis hired a private structural engineer to complete an inspection of the house. She did so, at a cost of $550. Things didn't speed up.
Two months later, the Lewises were told that a paperwork problem was holding up work on the house. Goldie had willed the home to Lewis and her daughter, Teryl Whitaker, who is next in the matriarchal lineage of the Nance clan. This ownership arrangement conflicted with the government's rules. So Whitaker's name was removed from the deed, leaving an aging Lewis as the sole owner of the property.
Even so, it wasn't until five months later that Lewis signed the final paperwork for her rehabilitation loan. And approval of the loan didn't exactly get the project hopping.
Lewis wrote Mayor Willie Brown twice asking for help. Her second plea, sent in April 1996, described the situation this way:
"If the repairs are not attended to soon, I believe I will have no choice but to sell the lot and find someplace else to live. The home would have to be demolished I'm sure, because I cannot afford the repairs on my fixed income."
A month later, Lewis received the following response from Addie Wallace, a rehabilitation manager for the HCDC.
"We hope that you were satisfied with the services our staff offered you. Our records show that you have an outstanding balance of $10 for the credit report. ... It has been our pleasure to serve you. Tell your friends about us."
Repair work on Lewis' house finally began in June 1996 -- 27 months after she applied for assistance. The problems, however, were far from over.
Because the housing rehab program that Lewis applied to involves public funds, government regulations dictate that construction work go to the "lowest responsible bidder."
Sun Construction Co., owned by Daniel Sun, offered the lowest bid to fix Lewis' home; it was $51,720. In fact, the Sun proposal was $13,000 lower than the next closest bid. The HCDC deemed the bid acceptable, passed along three references that Sun had provided, and left Lewis to make a decision. On the advice of staff from the HCDC and the Mayor's Office of Housing, Lewis agreed to hire Sun.
The contract between Sun and Lewis was signed Sept. 6, 1995. But for some unexplained reason, paperwork continued to crawl through various bureaucracies while Lewis' house fell down around her. Work didn't officially begin at the site until nine months later.
According to the contract, construction on Lewis' house was supposed to take no more than 60 days. More than 365 days later, it's still not finished. Daniel Sun refused to comment for this story, and repeated calls to his attorney were not returned.
But interviews of others involved with the project and a review of public records detail a litany of reasons for this absurdly lengthy delay in completion.
For one thing, although there were electrical, plumbing, and roofing subcontractors, Sun used just two of its own employees on the Lewis project. Independent contractors estimate that with a two-man crew, the work on the Lewis house would likely take six to eight months.
Also, it seems likely that Sun underbid the project. According to correspondence on the project, Sun wanted more money to complete the work almost as soon as its bid was accepted.
Sun argued that the house had deteriorated significantly, and costs had therefore increased, during the yearlong delay between its bid and the start of construction. But Sun was locked into the contract.
The contractor engaged in other squirming that suggests it was in over its financial head.
Before construction work ever began, Sun submitted the first of what would be 11 change orders, requesting that different cabinets, paint, and smoke detectors be substituted for those originally called for. To this day, there is great confusion among the HCDC, Sun, and the Lewises about which change orders were actually approved.
Sun attempted to refuse to pay for the permits required for construction -- even though the construction contract unquestionably stated that the permits were the contractor's responsibility.
Work came to a halt less than two weeks after it started, when Sun's workmen tore off the back of the house -- where they were to build a new kitchen -- without a building permit. The workmen removed and threw away a water heater that renovation plans said was merely to be disconnected and then reinstalled.
Then they asked Lewis to pay for a new one.
After a flurry of meetings among the staff of the HCDC and the Mayor's Office of Housing, Sun employees, and Lewis family members, work eventually continued -- with a permit and a water heater, purchased by Sun.
Soon, however, relations between Sun and the Lewis family again broke down. The original agreement called for all upstairs work to be completed first, so that Lewis could move back into her house before work on the downstairs unit and the exterior began. Instead, Lewis' home -- upstairs and downstairs, inside and outside -- was completely torn up, as the project fell further and further behind schedule.
Twice she went to stay with family members while the house was under construction; her absence didn't seem to speed the project a bit.
While she was gone, her belongings were moved to the basement, which flooded after a water pipe burst.
At this point, any hope of communication or agreement seemed to have ended. Lewis repeatedly pleaded that workers not smoke in her house. They ignored her. Work stopped. Sun thought Lewis fired his firm. Lewis thought Sun quit. Another flurry of meetings was held with another handful of bureaucrats.
After three more weeks, construction started up again.
And, again, went very badly.
The Lewis project was not the first time the HCDC had worked with Sun Construction. More than a year before Daniel Sun signed onto Lewis' home rehabilitation job, he contracted to renovate the home of Edith Dyson.
Dyson also is a widow who sought a government loan and the help of the HCDC to fix her home.
"I went through them, thinking it was a safe way to go, because there would be someone to oversee the work. My husband is dead. My children do not live with me," Dyson says. "I thought if I were to go through one of the Mayor's Office of Housing agencies, things would be all right."
Things were not all right.
Dyson's $14,000 remodeling project was considerably smaller than that of Lewis' home. Essentially, the job included the replacement of plumbing, reinsulation of the house, and the installation of a closet and some backyard steps.
Dyson says she was encouraged to hire Sun Construction, the lowest bidder for the project. She was, she says, provided no references for the firm. The contract was signed Jan. 19, 1993.
By June 1994, Dyson had asked that Sun not come back to work on her home. But because of a pay dispute, Sun didn't leave until October 1994. Dyson says the walls in her immaculate home were torn open -- and left open, with in-sulation hanging into the hallway -- for months. The construction work that was supposed to take 60 days took nearly a year. The price went up through change orders; one of them added $2,000 to the contract for that most unforeseeable of costs -- blueprints.
Dyson says she and Sun and the HCDC were in a constant battle.
"To this day, I do not know the amount of money left after the work or the change orders," Dyson says. "I just got tired and decided what will be will be, because I was getting physically ill.
"I'm finishing the rest of the house a little at a time, as I can afford to do so."
No one told Ora Lewis about Edith Dyson. Neither the Mayor's Office of Housing nor the HCDC included Dyson's name on the list of references given to Lewis when she decided to hire Sun Construction Co. to work on her home.
Sun Construction did not just tear off the back of Ora Lewis' house without a building permit, throw away her water heater, and drown her belongings in a basement. No, the Lewis house was to become a full-scale, never-ending, public- and private-sector construction disaster.
Before they were finished with the Lewis home, Sun's workers had pulled up and relaid vinyl flooring in the kitchen three times. The floor still doesn't conform to the job specifications. Among other things, the flooring, meant to be white, has begun to turn orange, and it is tearing at the edges where the room meets the hallway.
The cabinets in the kitchen appear to be hung crookedly; one side of the cabinets has separated from its frame.
Government records indicate that city inspectors still haven't reviewed all of the electrical work done in the house.
Although Sun finished wood floors in the bedrooms and living room of the home, the firm left the wooden flooring in the hallway that runs through the middle of the house unfinished. Sun claimed that refinishing the hall was not part of the contract, which covered only the refinishing of floors in the building's "entire living area."
But the contract calls for the refinishing of 600 square feet more flooring than Sun dealt with. And the hallway connects the living spaces of the home.
Sun workers were supposed to power-wash the exterior of the house. If they did so, they did it without disturbing the dirt crusted around the edges -- which might explain why the paint is peeling there.
To be fair, Sun had lousy plans to work from, and lousy administrative help on the project. The job specifications drawn up by the HCDC for Lewis' home renovation are vague and often incomplete, judged by normal construction standards. In some cases, the written job specifications don't match the blueprints for the project. As a matter of fact, some of the "punch lists" -- construction updates that show which parts of the job remain unfinished -- are longer than the original specifications.
In January, Lewis' daughter, Teryl Whitaker, who has since moved in to take care of her mother, found the house filled with smoke. Firemen pinpointed the cause: a teapot left on a hot plate in the basement by one of Sun's workers.
The new smoke detectors installed by Sun Construction had not gone off.
Three days later, the Fire Department again came to the home after flames shot out of an electrical outlet in Lewis' bedroom while she was in bed reading; Lewis, who suffers from hypertension, wound up in an emergency room for examination.
She and her family called a halt to Sun's work on the house until things were straightened out.
They're still not.
The state's Contractor's Licensing Board is investigating Sun Construction's role in the state of affairs at the Lewis home. But the governmental and nonprofit agencies that participated in the disaster on Lincoln Way continue to dither.
Sun Construction left Lewis' house for the last time on Jan. 10. Sun and the Lewis family each have a version of a punch list. The HCDC and the Mayor's Office of Housing are trying to come up with their own lists. In the meantime, they've held onto an $18,000 payment to Sun, even though an HCDC construction manager had approved it.
In April, with the $18,000 construction draw still in limbo, Daniel Sun filed a $33,000 mechanic's lien against Lewis' house.
Virtually anyone can file a lien against a piece of property; a lien merely notifies possible buyers that the lienholder might take action to seize the property to pay off a debt. In California, that action must occur within 90 days of the filing of a mechanic's lien. That three-month deadline for the lien against Lewis' home is fast approaching.
For no apparent rational reason, the lien seems to have stymied all the agencies involved in managing Lewis' project. Both the Mayor's Office of Housing and the HCDC say there's not much they can do about the unfinished rehab job because of the lien -- even though the lien doesn't directly involve government agencies, and even though there are processes set up for settling such disputes.
The rehabilitation contract signed by Lewis and Sun requires that they resolve any dispute by legal arbitration. Lewis does not have the slightest understanding of the intricacies of the legal process. She cannot afford an attorney to represent her.
And neither the city nor the HCDC, which are paid to manage the rehabilitation program, has bothered to mention the arbitration process to Lewis.
"No one has ever talked to us about arbitration," says Whitaker, Ora Lewis' daughter. "They have never said anything about how we're going to proceed in this case."
In fact, the Lewis family hasn't heard from the HCDC since April and has talked to staff at the Mayor's Office of Housing fewer than five times in the past six months.
"They all said that everything was put on hold because the lien was filed," says Whitaker. "And that's typical. If they changed typewriter ribbons, it would delay the project by months. We always contacted them. They didn't contact us. I have no idea what's going on."
Here's what one HCDC construction manager says is going on, for what it's worth:
"It hasn't been dropped or dismissed," says Tom Watts. "[Sun] has responded in a way that [Lewis] didn't like. And that has not set a good tone for negotiating the contract.
"We meet and discuss the issue between ourselves at least once a week. Sometimes a situation like this is just bad.
