7 On Your Side helps woman after San Francisco apartment flooded

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Sometimes you just need to vent and that's what a tenant of the San Francisco Housing Authority did after having a frustrating experience.

The woman lives at the Holly Court Public Housing Project near San Francisco's Bernal Heights Park. It's the oldest public housing project west of the Mississippi, so it's no surprise the building has issues.

San Francisco resident Starnisha Bryant described what she woke up to in the middle of the night. "It looked like this. Like a waterfall," she said.

Water gushed out of a hose leading into her washing machine.

She chuckled about it after it happened, but she wasn't laughing the night her apartment flooded.

Cellphone video Bryant shot that night showed water in every room of the house.

The next morning she shot video of water at the bottom of the stairs. She said water also leaked through her floor and soaked the ceiling of the unit below her.

Bryant traced the problem to July when she first called the city's 311 service request line.

She couldn't shut off the hot water going into the bathtub.

Officials with 311 confirmed she called them first on July 17, again on July 28 and then again on the August 7.

The water ran 24 hours a day for two months until the pressure build up so much it backed up through her pipes and out her washing machine hose. "I reported it to maintenance. I reported it to 311 several times and nothing was done until the flood," she said.

Maintenance finally came to shut off the water the next morning and Bryant contacted 7 On Your Side. "I called 7 On Your Side because nobody was on my side. Housing wasn't on my side, 311 wasn't on my side. I couldn't get any help," she said.

So 7 On Your Side contacted the Housing Authority and it apologized to Bryant saying: "The authority shares the frustration that plumbing issues can cause on the quality of life of our residents. We continue to focus our efforts on responding to and fixing problems so that our residents can be comfortable at home."

"My whole thing was the waste of water, that was going on too long," Bryant said.

The San Francisco Housing Authority received $68 million to renovate all 116 units at Holly Court Public Housing Project. Tenants will be temporarily located while the work takes place.