If you wanted to design a textbook case of nonprofit self-dealing, you'd be hard-pressed to beat what's happening in the Fillmore.
Here's the setup: A church leader named Bobby Sisk runs nonprofits that oversee church-owned housing complexes. Those nonprofits award security contracts for those complexes. And who happens to own the security company that gets those contracts? You guessed it — Bobby Sisk.
Let that sink in for a second. The same person sitting on one side of the table deciding who gets a lucrative contract is also sitting on the other side of the table receiving it. That's not community leadership. That's a conflict of interest so blatant it almost feels like a dare.
Public housing in San Francisco is supposed to serve some of the city's most vulnerable residents. These are people who depend on the system working with integrity. When one individual consolidates control over both the governance and the revenue streams of housing complexes, accountability doesn't just erode — it evaporates.
And let's talk about the broader pattern here. San Francisco has long had a cozy relationship between nonprofits, city funding, and politically connected leaders. Billions of dollars flow through the nonprofit-industrial complex every year, and oversight is often laughably thin. The Fillmore situation isn't an anomaly — it's a symptom of a city that treats nonprofit status as a shield against scrutiny rather than a mandate for transparency.
Where are the audits? Where is the Board of Supervisors? Where is anyone with subpoena power asking basic questions about where the money goes?
Residents of these housing complexes deserve to know that the people making decisions about their safety aren't primarily motivated by padding their own bottom line. Self-dealing in nonprofit housing isn't just ethically gross — it potentially diverts resources away from actual security, actual maintenance, and actual quality of life.
San Francisco loves to talk about protecting vulnerable communities. Here's a chance to actually do it. Start by following the money.