After Aisha McCain couldn’t reach her formerly homeless older brother for several days last fall, she grew concerned and called the front desk of the San Francisco supportive housing complex where he lived. When workers told her they hadn’t seen him, she dialed the police and raced over the Bay Bridge from a dinner in Berkeley.
Wilton McCain, who went by his middle name of Eric, had moved into the Mission District building, called the Jazzie Collins Apartments, soon after it opened in 2022. City leaders touted the 96-unit complex as a revolutionary step forward in the long and fraught challenge of lifting people off the city’s streets. No run-down tenement or makeshift shelter, it was stylish and modern, offering residents kitchenettes, access to an outdoor courtyard and hope.
But when Aisha arrived on the evening of Nov. 16, a San Francisco fire engine was already parked in front of the building. She wasn’t allowed up to her brother’s unit. “Where’s my brother?” she screamed repeatedly.
She would soon learn that, even though the facility was required to regularly check in with him, Eric had died so long ago that firefighters found his decaying body surrounded by insects. A medical examiner described the remains as “moderately decomposed” and broadly attributed his death at age 54 to chronic alcoholism…