Neighbors call it “the blue house.” For at least 15 years, people have complained about overcrowding inside, dirty needles, drug dealing, loud arguments, racist tirades, and a landlord who won’t do anything about it.
Home care nurse Nancy Younes moved into the house next door in 2007 and has since dealt with the brunt of the issues, calling police and lodging complaints more times than she can remember.
She hit her breaking point this year when the woman living in the garage next door called Younes’ 11-year-old son a retard and threatened to “beat his ass.” She called Younes, whose parents are Mexican and Egyptian, a racist slur and told her to leave the country. Earlier this year, she called Younes’ father the N-word.
In April, Younes got a restraining order against the woman, Megan Collier, 32, and her boyfriend, Giovanni Bernard, 30. But they still share a wall, and Younes can hear them yelling just beyond her headboard.
Collier and Bernard are just two of a rotating cast of tenants living at 183 Topeka Ave. in Silver Terrace. Since 2009, neighbors have complained to a half-dozen city departments about the house and its residents, who they say argue loudly, litter, and threaten others.
Freddie New, a retired Muni driver who owns and lives in the “tunnel entry”-style home, refused to tell The Standard how many tenants he has. Neighbors estimate eight to 10 people live in the 1,019-square-foot home.
“It almost looks like a halfway house,” Younes said. “Everybody in the neighborhood knows about that house.”
Melissa Glass, a neighbor who has been living in Silver Terrace for more than 40 years, guessed 20 people have lived in the blue house over the past five years.
Glass said she has found used needles in front of the house. Dog poop is also a regular walking hazard.
A couple of years ago, Glass saw the inside of the house for the first time when a friend of hers who was down on his luck was staying there. Glass said at the time that a curtain divided the living room into two “bedrooms.”
One tenant told her he was sleeping under the stairs. Another said New let him sleep in the kitchen. Sheds in the backyard have also housed tenants, according to Younes, who has seen them over the fence that divides her yard from New’s. Glass reports a musty stench from the house.
‘It’s my business what goes on in my house’
New doesn’t see the problem.
“These neighbors of mine, they need to go somewhere in the cemetery and find them a place and bury themselves,” he said in a phone interview with The Standard. “They not trying to help nobody that would be on the streets.”
New declined to answer questions about how he met his tenants or whether he worked with any organizations that provide services to unhoused people. He said that in some cases, he doesn’t charge any rent. Still, New’s tenants are driving the neighbors crazy. The Standard was unable to reach current or former tenants.
“I don’t want no recognition because I rent rooms. I don’t want a whole lot of publicity,” New said. “I’m just doing it because I’m a human being, too, and I could be in the same situation some of these people were [in] when they came in here.”
Glass said the couple in the garage makes the most trouble. They’re breeding dogs, she claimed, and the woman’s teen son is not in school.
“I called CPS,” Glass said. But New wouldn’t let the agents inside when they arrived, so they left, she said.
The San Francisco Human Services Agency, which oversees Child Protective Services, would not confirm Glass’ account, citing legal reasons.
Younes estimates that cops have come to the house 20 times this year alone. The San Francisco Police Department did not comment or provide records to The Standard by publication time.
Younes said she has also contacted the Department of Building Inspection and the city attorney’s office, as well as Supervisor Shamann Walton, who represents the area. A spokesperson for Supervisor Walton told The Standard his office is now working directly with Younes.
Glass added that she has left voicemails for SFPD’s narcotics department and the district attorney’s office, neither of which got back to her.
Earlier this month, Younes filed a formal complaint with DBI — the fifth against the house in 15 years. One, filed in 2009, described an illegal unit in the garage. Inspectors visited the house that year and issued a notice of violation. Three years later, New told DBI that he had removed the illegal unit and an illegal second kitchen and converted his extra bedrooms back to storage rooms. An inspector went to the house and signed off, but New did not pay the necessary fine to settle the issue, according to DBI spokesperson Patrick Hannan.
In other complaints filed in 2009, 2013, and 2015, neighbors and tenants said the house had bedbugs and was riddled with mold that caused one resident to seek medical treatment.
Then, during a review of unresolved violations in August 2023, a housing inspector realized that New had never paid his fees from the 2009 complaint, according to Hannan. Earlier this year, DBI threatened to put a lien on the house because of the outstanding fine, prompting New to pay $1,900 to close the case.
Younes’ complaint, also about an illegal unit, came just months after DBI finally closed the 15-year-old complaint about the same thing. A DBI agent visited the property on Oct. 22 to investigate but “could not gain access,” according to records. No inspector has been inside the house since 2012.
“The inspector has made contact with the owner and informed him that the city needs to conduct an inspection in response to an anonymous complaint,” Hannan wrote, adding that the inspection has not been scheduled. Depending on what the inspector finds, Hannan said, DBI may consider getting the city attorney’s office involved.
For now, all Younes and Glass can do is wait. Glass said she suspects the city would take their complaints more seriously if they lived in a more upscale area.
“We shouldn’t be subjected to it,” she said.