Their complaints all have one name in common: Bobby Sisk. While many of the church\u2019s tenants languish, Sisk sits atop a structure that controls and services its real estate portfolio through an intersecting web of nonprofit and for-profit entities. Those entities have awarded security contracts to Sisk\u2019s own company, W.S.B. & Associates, for 30 years.<\/p>\n
Sisk also leads boards for each of four nonprofit housing complexes owned by the church, including Thomas Paine, as well as the church\u2019s endowment board.<\/p>\n
This network, which overlaps directly with San Francisco\u2019s oldest Black church, has amassed tens of millions in assets and receives millions in annual grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A 2022 (opens in new tab)<\/a>article (opens in new tab)<\/a> in The Christian Recorder identifies Sisk as the church\u2019s \u201cbusiness development manager.\u201d On LinkedIn (opens in new tab)<\/a>, Sisk describes himself as \u201ceager to maintain an organization engaged in the housing development industry.\u201d<\/p>\n As evidenced by a brutal hammer attack<\/a> in January that left one Thomas Paine tenant hospitalized and maintenance staff\u2019s alleged theft of residents\u2019 packages (opens in new tab)<\/a>, the complex\u2019s security arrangements have failed to keep residents safe. Tenants say guards spend their shifts sitting and scrolling on their phones, rather than patrolling the grounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over the years, Sisk\u2019s complicated network of business relationships has been investigated by public agencies and even the church\u2019s own leadership, but little has changed. Meanwhile, tenants say their letters go unheeded, their calls go unanswered, and their demands go unaddressed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHis day is coming,\u201d said Anona Lee, a 30-year resident of Thomas Paine.\u00a0<\/p>\n The many houses of God<\/p>\n Sisk is tall and bald with a white beard, thick-frame glasses, and a politician\u2019s steady cadence. In public appearances, he dresses in suits and silk ties and often wears a luxury watch.<\/p>\n The first time Lee spoke with Sisk, she was optimistic that he could help her. She had never met Sisk but knew of him as the person who held the purse strings on improvements at the complex.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2022, Lee and other residents sent letters to Sisk requesting brighter lights in the Thomas Paine parking lot and more active security. Sisk agreed to call her. He was cordial and polite, Lee said, but the requested improvements never came.\u00a0<\/p>\n She hasn\u2019t been able to get him on the phone since.<\/p>\n \u201cHe doesn\u2019t come over here,\u201d Lee said, adding that in her three decades at the complex, she has never seen Sisk in person.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sisk did not respond to requests for comment by phone and email. The Standard visited his security company\u2019s office and Bethel AME, where staff said they would pass along a reporter\u2019s message. A supervisor at the WSB office said Sisk was seldom around. The church did not respond to requests for interviews with its board of trustees.<\/p>\n Sisk served on Bethel AME\u2019s board of trustees between 1970 and 2014, according to court documents (opens in new tab)<\/a>. He\u2019s currently the church\u2019s steward, meaning he\u2019s a lay leader who handles practical matters like managing finances.\u00a0<\/p>\n One former Thomas Paine tenant, who served on the complex\u2019s advisory board with Sisk and requested anonymity, said many tenants didn\u2019t like Sisk because he ignored their concerns, a sentiment echoed by five other current and former residents.<\/p>\n They described how he carried himself as the boss.<\/p>\n \u201cBobby was a presence,\u201d the former board member said. He was charismatic and dressed in fine suits. He was genteel but wanted everyone to know he was in charge. \u201cI can see how he could intimidate many people.\u201d<\/p>\n Sisk was already in a leadership position when the church started acquiring property in its neighborhood in the 1990s. The effort was a response to mass displacement caused by the racist urban renewal process that tore the Fillmore apart in the 1960s.<\/p>\n His colleague at the time, former Bethel AME pastor J. Edgar Boyd, said the idea was to keep the church\u2019s community rooted in the area.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe commitment was made that we\u2019ll get involved, this ministry, to preserve housing for people in our communities,\u201d Boyd said. \u201cMinistry means taking care of your congregation\u2019s needs.\u201d<\/p>\n The needs were widespread. In the \u201960s and \u201970s, San Francisco razed and redeveloped huge swaths of the Fillmore using eminent domain to force out homeowners who didn\u2019t want to sell. The process ultimately displaced some 20,000 residents of the historically Black neighborhood. Most couldn\u2019t afford to return to the new buildings that rose where their homes had stood.<\/p>\n \u201cThe average Black resident in that area felt totally hopeless,\u201d recalled Boyd, who left Bethel AME and moved to Los Angeles in 2012.<\/p>\n As a salve to that legacy, Congress in 1990 passed the Low-Income Housing Preservation and Resident Homeownership Act (opens in new tab)<\/a>, which funneled federal money to nonprofits that wanted to buy property and convert it to affordable housing.<\/p>\n Leadership at Bethel AME tapped in. The church had built Fellowship Manor, a low-income senior housing complex at 1201 Golden Gate Ave., in 1980. Using the federal funds, the church purchased the Prince Hall Apartments at 1170 McAllister St. in 1996, the Laurel Gardens Apartments at 1555 Turk St. in 1998, and Thomas Paine at 1086 Golden Gate Ave. in 2001.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2015, the church bought a hillside house in Golden Gate Heights, which property records show was once the residence of former pastor Robert Shaw, and in 2021, a market-rate Pacific Heights apartment building. Shaw declined to comment and said he left his position as pastor in 2023. A cleaner who opened the door Thursday at the Golden Gate Heights property said she had never heard of Shaw.<\/p>\n Sisk controls the entity that owns the 11-unit market-rate Pacific Heights apartment building at 2655 Pine St.<\/p>\n Paul Haynes served on the Thomas Paine board between 2001 and 2015, and said Boyd appointed him in part because of his professional background as an accountant and auditor. But when Boyd moved to L.A. and Sisk took over, the church stopped providing financial and governance training for board members, and Haynes got the impression that the church was making decisions about the property without consulting the board. Suddenly, his financial skills didn\u2019t seem relevant.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2013, Haynes said, the church approved the creation of an \u201casset manager\u201d position for Sisk with a six-figure salary. \u201cI had not been informed of this, so we were kind of surprised,\u201d Haynes said. He added that the Thomas Paine board did not have financial oversight of the church.<\/p>\n Haynes said the church and its organizations need stronger internal financial controls and more transparency.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a pretty closed organization, and Bobby Sisk pretty much runs it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The church\u2019s housing portfolio includes around 360 units with a total assessed value of more than $60 million. (Assessed value is often dramatically lower than the market value, due to California\u2019s Proposition 13, which limits how much assessed values can rise annually.)<\/p>\n When the church began acquiring property, Boyd created a nonprofit called Allen Community Development Corporation to manage Prince Hall and Thomas Paine. Sisk is now Allen CDC\u2019s president \u2014 and controls the nonprofits and LLCs responsible for receiving and managing the federal dollars that flow to those properties.<\/p>\n Those dollars are substantial. HUD provides nearly $3.5 million in annual rent subsidies to Thomas Paine alone, according to a 20-year contract signed in 2019 and obtained by The Standard. HUD confirmed that all four properties carry active contracts, though details on the other three were not available.<\/p>\n A third-party organization, California Affordable Housing Initiatives, oversees all four complexes on HUD\u2019s behalf. Despite persistent resident complaints about mold and asbestos, there are no active complaints at any of the properties, according to HUD and CAHI, which say all have been resolved.<\/p>\n For profits at nonprofits<\/p>\n Allen CDC spends more than a half a million dollars every year on security contracts for the church\u2019s affordable housing properties. This money goes to Sisk\u2019s company.<\/p>\n W.S.B. & Associates provides security at all four affordable housing properties, as well as for the church itself. In 2023, Allen CDC listed more than $650,000 in security contract expenses on its tax filings. The contracts accounted for about 8% of the nonprofit\u2019s total expenses that year and were its biggest individual line item after salaries. All the while, tenants have consistently complained about poor security.<\/p>\n By comparison, the affordable housing developer Chinatown Community Development Corporation spent approximately 4% of its portfolio budget \u2014 approximately $2 million \u2014 on security last year. CCDC manages 3,200 low-income units, compared with Allen CDC\u2019s approximately 190, meaning CCDC spends approximately $600 per unit, while Allen CDC spends approximately $3,400.<\/p>\n Security guards working at the church\u2019s complexes last week had no idea their employer was receiving such robust contracts while paying guards near the minimum wage.<\/p>\n \u201cThey get all that, and they can\u2019t pay us overtime? That\u2019s a slap in the face,\u201d said one guard, who added that his pay is just above San Francisco\u2019s $19 minimum wage. He and other guards who spoke with The Standard asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing their jobs.<\/p>\n A guard at a different complex said he has worked for WSB for 15 years and earns $25 per hour. He said the company\u2019s contracts were none of his business. But one of his coworkers at the site said 2026 would be his last year on the job.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t do this anymore,\u201d he said, getting into his car and pulling up a rideshare app. He explained that to supplement his income, he picks up one or two passengers on the way home from work.\u00a0<\/p>\n Boyd said the church selected WSB as its security contractor through a competitive bidding process \u2014 and confirmed that Sisk was already a leading member of the church when it selected his company. (A contested 2015 audit (opens in new tab)<\/a> attached to a lawsuit found no evidence of a competitive bidding process.) Boyd added that HUD is aware of the arrangement.<\/p>\n \u201cWe always sought out African American vendors,\u201d Boyd said. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to make the playing field anywhere close to level, and undo the injustices and atrocities that were done through the invoking of eminent domain, then we had to be very focused about that.\u201d<\/p>\n Sisk leads a separate nonprofit and board for each property, as well as the church\u2019s endowment board. That means the same man who contracts for security at the buildings also controls the nonprofits that hire his company. Joan Harrington, a nonprofit ethics expert at Santa Clara University, described the arrangement as a clear-cut conflict of interest.<\/p>\n \u201cYou should not be gaining a benefit from your association with a nonprofit,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Questions from within<\/p>\n Over the years, Sisk\u2019s activities have attracted some scrutiny. A 2013 audit of the San Francisco Housing Authority (opens in new tab)<\/a> found that the agency in 2009 gave Sisk\u2019s security company a one-time contract not to exceed $1 million. Between 2009 and 2013, however, WSB received nearly $4 million in city funds while paying its guards a maximum of $29 per hour.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSFHA has allowed these contractors to continue providing services beyond their contracted terms and in excess of contracted award amounts,\u201d the audit reads. \u201cIn addition, there has been no formal monitoring of the performance of these contracts.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, SFHA granted WSB another contract in 2017, this one for two years and more than $350,000, to guard three sites, including SFHA\u2019s office. It opted to extend the contract for another year after the initial two-year period; that ended in 2020. SFHA has not contracted with WSB since then; a spokesperson said the agency shifted to a system in which private management companies, rather than the agency itself, hire security firms.<\/p>\n In 2016, Sisk filed a defamation suit in San Francisco Superior Court against an auditing firm called Elevate Independent Services and former Bethel AME pastor Philip Cousin over an audit the church board commissioned the previous year. The 85-page audit report (opens in new tab)<\/a>, attached to the lawsuit, tracked Sisk\u2019s control of the various property nonprofits and found a series of unexplained or poorly explained financial transactions.<\/p>\n Sisk filed the defamation suit in response to the audit on the grounds that the consultant who conducted it, Irella Blackwood, was not a licensed auditor. He accused Blackwood and Cousin of mounting a smear campaign against him in an effort to \u201cusurp greater control over the properties.\u201d<\/p>\n Contrary to what Boyd had said, the audit found no evidence of a competitive bidding process. It found more than $200,000 in payments from the church to Sisk and WSB over 10 months between 2013 and 2014 that couldn\u2019t be explained by existing contracts. And it found that in 2013, a church nonprofit sold the Prince Hall apartment complex to Allen CDC for $8 million, but there was no record of the church ever receiving that money.\u00a0<\/p>\n The church nonprofit\u2019s 2013 tax documents list only about $1.5 million in revenue. \u201cIt appears the proceeds of the sale were diverted,\u201d the audit says.<\/p>\n In his lawsuit, Sisk disputed that he diverted the proceeds and said he was not a party to the sale, although his signature appears on the sale document as president of Allen CDC. Sisk said Blackwood and Cousin knowingly propagated false claims against him to damage his reputation.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774992254_190_-S3840x2561-FPNG.png\"\/)
A UPS delivery person at Thomas Paine Square Apartments in January. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774992255_630_-S3840x2561-FPNG.png\"\/)
Residents of the Thomas Paine Square Apartments say security measures have failed to keep them safe. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard<\/p>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774992257_370_-S3840x5757-FPNG.png\"\/)
W.S.B. & Associates provides security at Thomas Paine and the three other low-income complexes owned by Bethel AME Church. | Source: Jason Henry for The Standard<\/p>\n