Around 5:30 a.m. on Oct. 24, Inessa Vinarskaya was sleeping in her ground-floor unit in Parkmerced, San Francisco’s largest apartment complex, when her cat, Sammy, pawed her face. Through squinted eyes, she saw a figure dressed in black inside her home.

When he noticed that Vinarskaya had woken up, the intruder grabbed her cellphone and demanded the code to unlock it. Vinarskaya, 59, gave a fake PIN. He put a gun to her head and said: “I’m gonna kill you.”

The second time, she didn’t lie. The thief made off with her iPhone 13, her landline phone, jewelry, an iPad, an Apple Watch, an Apple Pencil, and a wallet with credit cards. Unable to locate a security guard and without a phone to call for help, Vinarskaya ended up driving around the nearby Stonestown mall for 45 minutes looking for a guard to call 911. By then, the thief had emptied her bank account and that of her 30-year-old son — about $3,500 in total.

A police report confirmed her account.

Vinarskaya reported the armed robbery to Brick + Timber, the company that manages the 3,200-unit, 152-acre Parkmerced complex, the next day. She asked the company to add another lock to her door and secure the 12 windows in her apartment — including the kitchen window the thief used to escape. Instead, she says, Brick + Timber added a few screws above that window, and only after she declined the suggestion that she move to a different unit.

The window still lifts open, leaving a crack a few inches wide.

Vinarskaya eventually had to secure the apartment herself, shelling out $80 for two door locks and asking a friend to add screws to the other 11 windows. She plans to add a third door lock and a doorbell camera.

“I just need protection. I don’t need to change my apartment, and they have no energy for it — they still wouldn’t put the lock on my door,” she said.

Neighbors said Vinarskaya’s ordeal is a glaring example of lax security and management’s failure to address urgent dangers at Parkmerced, which was built in the 1940s and is home to roughly 8,000 people on the city’s southern border.

A police report notes that the camera outside Vinarskaya’s door had been broken for a week before the break-in. The same report says her case resembles six other burglary reports at Parkmerced this fall, all involving forced entry, often through windows.

In recent years, residents claim quality-of-life problems like widespread mold, leaking ceilings, chronically broken elevators, and overflowing trash cans have pushed them to band together as the Parkmerced Tenants Association and potentially pursue legal action.

Conditions at Parkmerced were supposed to be improving. Douglas Wilson Companies, a real estate services and receivership firm, took control of the property in March after its owner Maximus Real Estate Partners defaulted on its loans. As the lender-appointed receiver of Parkmerced, DWC assumed control and management of the complex’s operations and financials from the owner.

DWC pledged $70 million in repairs and hired Brick + Timber to handle day-to-day property management, making the firm the primary point of contact for residents — and the focus of most complaints.

Yet, eight months later, residents across multiple buildings say Parkmerced has continued to deteriorate, and serious safety concerns remain. Meanwhile, management ignores requests for help, tenants say, while claiming in court that persistent issues have been addressed.

DWC says it has poured “millions” into tackling deferred maintenance, including renovating more than 450 units, repairing elevators and lighting, and fixing leaks. The company said occupancy rates have risen from 81.5% to 85% under its watch.

“Our priority is to make sure our current residents are safe and comfortable while living at Parkmerced,” CEO and Chairman Douglas Wilson said in a statement.

Ballast Investments, the parent company of Brick + Timber, did not respond to a request for comment.

To Parkmerced residents, the cycle of complaints and inaction reflects a broader pattern of neglect that affects both security and basic infrastructure. The impact is felt particularly strongly at the apartment tower at 125 Cambon Drive, where management has ignored allegations of a prostitution ring in the building, tenants say.

Residents say they grew suspicious around mid-2024 when they saw over several months a trio of men repeatedly escorting nonresident men and young women — sometimes scantily clad — into the building. In June of this year, residents observed them entering a second-floor apartment.

Beginning in August, 15-year Parkmerced resident Rebecca Shannon repeatedly notified property managers and ownership about the alleged prostitution and urged action, according to emails reviewed by The Standard. Another resident, Jeff Cilione, emailed Brick + Timber on Aug. 21 with photos of what he claimed to be a pimp escorting strangers into the elevators.

The responses from management were vague. Brick + Timber said it would forward the reports to police, while an email from DWC President Michelle Vives acknowledged general “clean-up issues” needing a “comprehensive and strategic approach,” without requesting more details or outlining next steps.

“I don’t understand why this person has not been evicted and is allowed to continue doing this, possibly putting other tenants in danger,” Shannon wrote in a Sept. 5 email. Shannon wrote four follow-up messages in September and October that drew similar replies: Police were looking into it.

Residents have also shared photos of a pried-open garbage room door and an intruder sleeping inside.

Management says the San Francisco Police Department is investigating the alleged prostitution ring. Police confirmed that they raided a Parkmerced home a block from the Cambon tower on Oct. 30, arresting 45-year-old Guijun Zhao, who was charged with pimping, pandering, procuring, and maintaining a house of prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty and was released from custody Nov. 4. Still, Shannon and her neighbors say suspicious activity at their building has continued since the police raid.

Brick + Timber hired a new security contractor, TS4 Security, on Oct. 29. But residents say security is sparse and guards often appear distracted. “I walk through the neighborhood daily, and security is just on their phones,” said Jeff Cilione, who has lived at 125 Cambon for 11 years. “I only see a couple of them. One car, two guys.”

A security team member said Parkmerced has four guards and two patrol vehicles on duty at all times on the housing complex, which is 10 acres larger than the nearby San Francisco State University campus.

DWC said it doubled security staffing to four guards and is installing 500 cameras to replace broken ones left by the previous owner, and is coordinating with the SFPD. The company said it has notified tenants about the string of break-ins and reminded them to secure windows, and is evaluating options to fortify ground-floor doors.

TS4 Security did not respond to a request for comment.

While safety fears mount, residents say basic maintenance has also collapsed, leaving mold, leaks, and chronically broken elevators unaddressed for months at a time.

DWC has painted a different picture in receivership court filings.

“Finally, significant progress has been made in resident engagement. Most Tenant Association (TA) concerns have now been addressed, and leaders from the TA have shared positive feedback on the improvements and responsiveness they’ve observed,” the company wrote in an Oct. 13 report to the judge overseeing the receivership process.

DWC says hundreds of long-delinquent units represent millions in unpaid rent. In a statement, the company said it has offered payment plans to some tenants while pursuing evictions in accordance with local laws, arguing that financial stability is essential to sustaining repairs and safety upgrades.

Vives said in July that the team had encountered a “shocking” level of deferred maintenance, including years of water damage and peeling paint that left some interiors vulnerable to dry rot. The DWC president said the company would stockpile elevator parts for each of Parkmerced’s eleven 12-story towers, where frequent breakdowns are a constant frustration for residents, and replace all water heaters and boilers. The turnaround plan included hiring more than 70 on-site Brick + Timber property managers and renovating more than 400 units.

“We just need to start doing stuff, period,” Vives said at the time. “There’s a bunch of low-hanging fruit that we can deal with today that will immediately make people’s lives better.”

But Shannon says the company has not addressed those problems.

“The changes that we have seen have actually made quality-of-life issues here decline. It’s been a mess,” Shannon said.

Eight months into receivership, elevator outages are routine, often leaving at least one out of service, tenants in three buildings say. There have been times all of a building’s elevators are out of service for days. At 125 Cambon, one elevator has been down for two months.

Meanwhile, DWC claimed in its Oct. 13 report to the court that “mechanical and vertical transportation systems were another major area of progress. The Receiver and his team have addressed all elevator issues.”

In a Nov. 6 email, management told residents at 125 Cambon Drive that it would take four weeks to fix the elevator, which remained broken as of Monday.

Residents say they continue to experience frequent heat outages despite management’s promises to overhaul the complex’s boilers. Cilione said his heat was out Nov. 14-20. A plumber told him the boiler pipes throughout the building were flooded, which required drainage. The Parkmerced Tenants Association’s lawyer, Eva Shang, said she has declarations from tenants in three buildings of frequent, recurring heat outages.

Residents across multiple buildings have also reported laundry-room flooding and garbage piled up and strewn about in trash rooms. Over the first weekend of November, garbage collectors did not pick up trash at 125 Cambon Drive, according to Shannon, leaving the trash room overflowing and forcing residents to dump their refuse in the lobby.

Inside the three-story garage, people illegally park scooters and do maintenance work on vehicles.

Gandhia Andrews has lived in two townhouses during her 20 years at Parkmerced, most recently on Diaz Avenue. While Brick + Timber fixed a broken fence behind her home within a week of it collapsing in late September, a crack running across the ceiling of her unit has gone unrepaired since August, despite multiple requests.

Andrews said it took more than two weeks for maintenance to clean a stairwell after someone had repeatedly urinated there. Emails reviewed by The Standard show Andrews reported the issue Oct. 15; it wasn’t cleaned until Nov. 6.

Andrews said management falsely marked unresolved issues as fixed, including a leaking hot-water valve near her sidewalk. She reported the problem Sept. 17, and management claimed Nov. 7 that it had been resolved. The Standard witnessed the valve dripping later that day.

When a reporter visited tenant Shail Patel, a graduate student at San Francisco State University, earlier this month, his first question was: “Are you with maintenance?”

His kitchen sink had been clogged for more than a week, leaving the five residents of the two-bedroom unit unable to cook or wash dishes as foul-smelling water sat in the basin. “It’s a health hazard,” he said.

Patel sent three follow-up emails after management told him someone would come within two days. When he visited the maintenance office in person, staffers told him they didn’t have enough crew, but he was “a priority.”

The staff did not unclog the sink for nine days.

“When Brick + Timber took over, it definitely got worse,” Patel said. “It was really smooth before the ownership transferred. They used to send someone in two days; now it’s a week.”

Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who represents the area, said she was heartened by the news in March that Parkmerced was being placed in the care of a receiver who had promised to address longstanding maintenance issues. But in the ensuing months, Melgar said, complaints to her office about conditions at Parkmerced have increased.

“What a fucking bummer,” she said.

Melgar has floated the idea of the city buying the property, potentially through a bond, but this is unlikely amid a budget crisis.

“It is kind of a prime opportunity, but right now control of the land is in flux between the former owner and the receiver,” Melgar said.

Parkmerced’s decline began more than a decade ago. In 2011, the Board of Supervisors approved a $1.2 billion plan to replace 1,500 townhomes with 7,200 energy-efficient apartments and add parks, retail, and a rerouted Muni line. But construction never started, and Maximus Real Estate Partners refinanced the complex, taking on hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

As the redevelopment stalled, conditions worsened. Buildings developed cracks, finances frayed, and vacancies jumped to nearly 30% during the pandemic. Complaints to the city of mold, squatters, and slow repairs surged. By late 2023, Parkmerced’s revenue couldn’t service its $1.8 billion loan, and lenders asked the court to appoint a receiver.

But residents said the efforts by DWC and Brick + Timber have focused on sprucing up the exterior — landscaping and repairing cracks and spalling — while ignoring interior issues they can’t paint over.

“A lot of what they’ve done is superficial,” Shannon said. “The quality-of-life issues here have not been addressed.”

Shannon began organizing tenants in her building in March and helped launch the Parkmerced Tenants Association on Oct. 20. The group, which includes roughly 300 residents across five buildings, gives tenants a collective voice to push for repairs, stronger safety measures, and greater accountability.

Shang, the group’s attorney, plans to file a motion in early December asking the judge overseeing the receivership to order immediate repairs and interventions.

“We believe the building-wide Parkmerced Association, now that the building is in receivership, will be a more effective channel in getting our concerns addressed,” said Shang.

DWC said it is addressing the issues. “We have been given authority from the Superior Court and substantial capital from the lender to immediately focus on repairing and replacing health and safety deficiencies,” Wilson said in a statement.

Vinarskaya has grown tired of waiting. She fixed what management wouldn’t — and is looking to hold DWC and Brick + Timber responsible.

After nearly a month of telling management she felt unsafe — and ultimately having to secure her apartment herself — Vinarskaya is calling lawyers with plans to sue the companies.

“It’s not only for the locks,” she said. “It’s because I’m unprotected in Parkmerced, and they don’t care about people.”