Graphic content warning: This article contains an image of a bloody head injury.
Au’janie McAllister had been sounding the alarm for months: someone wanted to hurt her.
In August, McAllister said one of her neighbors in the Thomas Paine Square Apartments attacked and robbed her and her daughter, with the help of a group of other women. Police confirmed the assault.
After the attack, she alerted Domus Management, the company that manages the complex. She filed a police report and began seeking a restraining order against her neighbor, but later withdrew from the process, fearing retaliation for turning to law enforcement.
On Dec. 18, the same neighbor allegedly jumped McAllister’s sister, Ariane Gillmore. Later that night, during a town hall with District 5 supervisor Bilal Mahmood, Gillmore appealed for help: “Will it take one of us getting murdered before you take this seriously?”
Less than a month later, on Jan. 6, McAllister said she was crossing the street when she saw the neighbor approaching with a friend. She said the two women knocked her down and beat her while she was on the ground. Moments later, she felt a hard blow to her skull.
Residents say security at the Thomas Paine Square Apartments is ineffective.
The Buchanan Street Mall, which borders the complex to the west, is in the midst of a huge renovation.
McAllister ended up at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital with a concussion and a fractured eye socket. The doctors told her she had been struck by a hammer.
The San Francisco Police Department confirmed the incident and that McAllister was transported to the hospital by paramedics. A spokesperson said the case remains open and police have made no arrests.
Au’janie McAllister was the victim of a Jan. 6 assault with a hammer. | Source: Au’janie McAllister
Speaking from her hospital bed on Jan. 12, McAllister was aghast that none of the entities responsible for her safety — property management, security, or city officials — had intervened. Over roughly five months, she said she reported threats, survived multiple attacks on herself and her family, and publicly pleaded for help — all before she was assaulted and hospitalized.
“Knowing about the situation in August, something should have been done then,” she said.
Tenants say McAllister’s assault is an example of a disturbing pattern at Thomas Paine, a 98-unit Fillmore District apartment complex bounded by Turk Street, Laguna Street, Golden Gate Avenue, and the Buchanan Street Mall. Rent at the taupe shingle-clad low-income development, which is owned by the nearby Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, is federally subsidized through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to HUD documents, Bethel AME received annual funding of $3.5 million in 2020 through an entity named Thomas Paine Square Apartments Limited Partnership, and is due to receive department funds through 2040. The complex does not receive rent subsidies from the city or state.
The apartments opened in 1971 as part of San Francisco’s postwar “urban renewal” effort, during which the city destroyed much of the Fillmore neighborhood and decimated its Black population. Today, the neighborhood sees less violent crime on average than the Civic Center area to its east, but more than the Lower Pacific Heights and Japantown neighborhoods to its north and west.
Residents of Thomas Paine say they’ve repeatedly raised safety concerns that management dismisses. Domus made headlines in December when security cameras caught staff on video allegedly stealing Christmas gifts (opens in new tab) from tenants. Tenants have long complained about mold and asbestos at the complex, and alleged that the past two companies charged with managing the property have each cashed rent checks without properly crediting tenants’ balances.
Mahmood said he convened the December meeting with tenants to discuss maintenance issues and other complaints about Domus. “After meeting with residents, my office escalated claims of existing safety violations to our City Attorney’s office,” he said. The City Attorney’s office confirmed it is aware of the complaints and working “to get the property owner to abate outstanding code violations.”
Residents say the situation was bad enough when it consisted of negligent maintenance and employee misbehavior. But now life at Thomas Paine has become outright dangerous
“These women are experiencing documented violence against them and it’s being ignored,” said tenants’ rights attorney Eunice Chang, who is representing McAllister and numerous other Thomas Paine residents in filing complaints.
Chang, who has represented renters for more than a decade, is also helping McCallister and another client to petition for new subsidized housing by invoking protections (opens in new tab) under the federal Violence Against Women Act, which can entitle victims who live in HUD housing to relocation.
Domus president Cathy Metcalf referred questions to an attorney representing the property’s owner. Neither the attorney nor Bobby Sisk, who effectively leads Bethel AME as the church’s steward, responded to requests for comment. An employee at Domus’s on-site office declined to answer questions and asked this reporter to leave the complex.
A history of neglect
Domus, a Lodi-based property manager that oversees four other properties in San Francisco, took over the Thomas Paine complex in 2021 after residents formed a tenants association to oust the previous manager, Capri Management Company. The tenants, who alleged that Capri had not been properly crediting rent payments, were at first optimistic about the new managers at Domus, according to the association’s co-chair Anona Lee. But that feeling evaporated within a month.
A UPS delivery person outside the Thomas Paine Square Apartments.
“I learned that these management companies are all the same,” said Lee, a 25-year resident of the complex. “The mannerisms, the way they talk to us, the way paperwork would just come up missing. It’s the same pattern with each one.”
She added that residents have a pet name for the new management: “Dumb-us.”
In 2022, Lee and 45 other tenants signed an open letter (opens in new tab) addressed to Domus and the property’s church ownership demanding repairs, mold and asbestos inspections, and access to rent payment records. Lee said neither the company nor the church ever responded.
Official complaints to the Department of Building Inspection spiked when Domus came in — the department’s website (opens in new tab) lists 33 complaints between 2022 and the present, compared to just 19 complaints between 2002 and 2021.
Barbara Carthen has been living at the complex since it opened in the 1970s and said conditions have declined markedly.
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen Thomas Paine, with Domus,” she said.
The handyman
By the time she was hospitalized, McAllister was already disillusioned with the company hired to oversee her building.
In 2021, when Capri managed the property, several women submitted written complaints alleging sexual harassment by a maintenance worker. McAllister said the worker cornered her in a maintenance shed and asked to see her breasts. She said Capri later fired him. After Domus took over, McAllister and other residents said they saw the same worker back on site in 2023.
Jesica Salinas said she gets anxiety when coming home to her apartment.
Bethel AME Church, which owns the property at Thomas Paine Square Apartments, is across the street from the complex.
“This man who asked to see my breasts is on the campus again,” she recalled. “How would you think I was gonna feel? I have daughters.”
Resident Jesica Salinas, who has lived at Thomas Paine for 15 years, was appalled to see the man return to the complex. She said she submitted a written complaint against the man when he asked her if she could still have children, because he wanted her to have his child.
“I was disturbed that [Domus] would not look out for their tenants,” she said.
After further complaints were raised, the maintenance man was transferred and remains employed at the Domus-managed Laurel Gardens development a few blocks away, according to multiple residents who have seen him in the other complex. (The Standard’s attempts to reach the worker were unsuccessful. Domus didn’t respond to emailed questions about the worker.)
It’s one of the reasons Salinas still doesn’t feel safe at Thomas Paine.
“Every day, it’s anxiety attacks,” she said. “I get home and my heart starts accelerating.”
Security lapses
While Domus is the primary target of resident ire, tenants are also frustrated with the lack of response by W.S.B. & Associates, a company contracted by the church to provide security at the property. Public records indicate that W.S.B. is owned by Sisk, Bethel AME’s steward.
Residents described guards who stay in the security booth on their phones for their entire shift and are unresponsive to resident concerns. Multiple residents also said guards, who are on duty from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m., stopped patrolling the grounds five or six years ago — before Domus took over — and that patrols never resumed.
Lee said she has never seen a security guard try to intervene or even take a report in the event of a fight or physical altercation.
Residents previously told Mission Local (opens in new tab) that the landlord, Bethel AME, is as dismissive of their concerns as the property management company it hired.
Lee accused Bethel steward Sisk of independently selecting contractors and ignoring tenants. “His day is coming,” she said. Sisk did not respond to questions about his oversight of Thomas Paine.
Gillmore said security was nowhere to be seen when she was attacked on the property in December, and no guard came to ask if she was okay or to call police afterward.
“Security is negligent. They don’t care,” she said.
Patrick Cochran, a tenant organizer and paralegal in Chang’s office who has been advocating for the Thomas Paine residents, said police and the District Attorney are reviewing the assault. The SFPD confirmed the investigation; the DA declined to comment. Meanwhile, residents said the woman accused of attacking McAllister remains in the complex, and Domus has not moved to evict her.
For McAllister, the goal is simple: get out of Thomas Paine before violence strikes again.
“I was beaten in the head with a hammer,” McAllister said. “I could have died.”