Salesh Prasad was poised for an inspirational second act.

Raised in gang culture in Modesto and sentenced to life for murder in his early 20s, he was granted parole in 2021, when he was almost 50. He described himself as a changed man, committed to helping other vulnerable people. Immigration agents jeopardized that mission when they detained him on the day of his release and tried to send him to his native Fiji, a country he had left at age 6.

Inside the HomeRise buildings where Prasad worked, however, he was viewed not as a mentor but as a menace, enabled by superiors who looked the other way, an investigation by the Chronicle and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program has found.

In a span of two years, at least five former staff members and three residents said they complained to HomeRise that Prasad had committed various acts of misconduct ranging from serial harassment to sexual assault, delivering their concerns through both verbal complaints and emails to managers.

Prasad, tasked with helping residents obtain supportive services and avoid eviction, regularly pressed his clients, other tenants and occasionally his co-workers for intercourse and other sexual acts while on the clock, the residents and former staff told the Chronicle. One female resident said he pressured her to expose herself to him. Others said his advances were even more explicit: He solicited them for oral and anal sex, offering to pay with cash, drugs or food donated to the nonprofit.

HomeRise is one of San Francisco’s largest operators of permanent supportive housing, the linchpin program in the city’s efforts to get people off the streets. Touted for years as a model provider by political leaders, the organization receives tens of millions of dollars in city funding annually to serve more than 1,500 residents within 17 complexes, some of them gleaming high-rises like Jazzie Collins that stand in stark contrast to run-down residential hotels in the Tenderloin.

Yet the city department overseeing supportive housing, which reports directly to Mayor Daniel Lurie, has repeatedly failed to ensure that HomeRise provides a safe environment to help the formerly homeless heal and recover. In March, as reporters were investigating why a resident was discovered dead and decomposing in his room nearly two weeks after he was last seen, the city attorney’s office told the Chronicle it had opened an investigation into the nonprofit.

The episode followed a troubling period during which city records show HomeRise struggled with severe staffing shortages, allegations of financial mismanagement, and multiple investigations and whistleblower complaints regarding habitability issues and other concerns. For the past 2½ years, these issues have mostly kept the organization on “tier 3” status, the city’s watch list for nonprofits with “severe fiscal and/or programmatic concerns that haven’t been adequately addressed despite department intervention.” The bulk of Prasad’s alleged actions occurred during this period of elevated monitoring.

Reporters sent a detailed list of questions regarding Prasad’s alleged misconduct to HomeRise interim CEO Leo Levenson, who called the allegations “extremely concerning to our leadership team and our board” and said the organization was “looking into” them.

He continued: “Our responsibility and current focus are to understand what happened, address it directly, and make the changes needed to better protect residents and support staff, and to rebuild trust within our community.”

The San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing declined to answer detailed questions from reporters, citing ongoing legal considerations, but said the department “takes allegations of sexual misconduct in City-funded housing programs extremely seriously” and “remains committed” to holding providers accountable.

In May, HomeRise chief executive Janéa Jackson announced she was stepping down, leaving the nonprofit in a state of uncertainty as its board searches for a successor.

Many HomeRise residents struggle with severe mental illness and addiction. Some survived gunshot wounds, sexual assault and other violence while homeless — traumas that HomeRise promises to help them recover from.

Case managers are central to that commitment, said Ann Oliva, CEO of the nonprofit National Alliance to End Homelessness. Second in importance only to a roof over one’s head, effective case managers connect clients to benefits like food stamps and mental health care and work with them to avoid eviction, while learning their complex histories and needs.

Residents and staff told the Chronicle that Prasad, in contrast, seemed solely concerned with his own sexual desires. While his alleged misconduct was exceptional in its scale and duration, they said, his story was emblematic of an organization that chronically fell short in providing the intensive support many residents needed, and struggled to staff its supportive services team with qualified people.

A former Jazzie Collins building supervisor said that she’d heard about Prasad’s alleged behavior at Treasure Island, and that residents had come to her asking to be removed from his caseload because he made them uncomfortable. But she never raised these concerns with her superiors, she said.

She said she made this decision in part because nobody formally reported allegations of sexual misconduct to her and in part because HomeRise’s apparent failure to address the Treasure Island incident made her believe it would not meaningfully respond to any misbehavior at Jazzie Collins.

“I let him do whatever he wanted to do, honestly,” the supervisor said. “If my boss is not gonna do nothing about it, and they hadn’t done nothing about it, I mean, what was I supposed to do? And what was I supposed to say?”

Two former HomeRise employees told reporters they each reported Prasad directly to the building supervisor, contradicting her account.

The chain of events that would end in Prasad’s resignation began one afternoon last September, when a female resident of Jazzie Collins approached HomeRise senior case manager Amanda Ajisebutu, visibly distraught and crying, and reported that Prasad had assaulted her, according to a report by the city’s homelessness department obtained by the Chronicle.

For two weeks, HomeRise officials failed to alert the San Francisco Police Department and city regulators of the incident while keeping Prasad on the job, the homelessness department found. During this delay, he entered another resident’s apartment on his own and remained inside for 25 minutes, records show.

Ajisebutu, who did not answer questions, eventually filed a report about the alleged Sept. 16 assault on Oct. 1, 15 days after the resident reported it to her. But nobody at HomeRise reported Prasad’s entry into the resident’s room, a violation of HomeRise policy, despite it being captured by security footage, city records show.

Prasad resigned in October, shortly after HomeRise opened an investigation into him. He quickly found another job, this time as a case manager in the East Bay.

Incarcerated to celebrated

Like many of his former clients at HomeRise, Prasad’s childhood was marred by hardship and abuse.

As a child in Modesto, where his family settled after immigrating from Fiji, he survived domestic violence and was sexually abused by an adult male acquaintance. Prasad has said that he joined local gangs for protection and used alcohol and crack cocaine to numb himself, accelerating his unraveling.

In 1994, when he was 22, Prasad shot a man named Thomas Ortiz twice in the back of his head during an argument, killing him. Prasad believed Ortiz had smashed several of his car windows, according to Stanislaus County prosecutors. A jury convicted him of second-degree murder.

Prasad served 25 years in prison before a state board granted his request for parole in April 2021. In its decision, the board cited Prasad’s involvement in therapy and drug and alcohol recovery groups. A prison psychologist who examined Prasad determined he posed a low risk for future violence.

Prasad was not immediately freed, however. That August, he was transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and threatened with deportation because of his murder conviction.

He mounted a campaign to fight back, applying four months later for deferral of removal under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Shortly after entering ICE detention, Prasad had come out as bisexual, and he cited fears he would be “targeted and tortured” in Fiji due to his sexual orientation. The following May, he filed a habeas petition challenging the legality of his detention.

Local activists and lawmakers rushed to embrace Prasad. In June 2022, a social justice nonprofit launched a Change.org petition urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to pardon him, garnering 826 verified signatures and spurring a profile in the Guardian. San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors soon favored the pardon application — which remains pending today — in a unanimous resolution citing Prasad’s promise to “help other people rather than hurt them” if released, including by providing “mentorship to other survivors of childhood sexual abuse.”

“I’m sharing my story with the public in hopes it will inspire change,” Prasad wrote in an opinion piece for the Bay Area Reporter, an LGBTQ±focused publication, titled “Let’s not forget about LGBTQ immigrants in ICE detention.”

A spokesperson for the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, which represented Prasad while he was in ICE custody, declined to comment on the allegations against Prasad at HomeRise, saying it had no knowledge of his activities there.

“We know that Sal has endured and overcome a great deal of difficulty in his life, including serving decades in prison and surviving more than a year of horrific ICE detention,” the office said in a statement. “Sal has worked hard to rebuild his life, and to help others rebuild theirs.”

Prasad was released from ICE custody in December 2022 after an immigration judge granted him bond. A photo update to his Change.org petition from that time shows him standing in a parking lot and surrounded by trees, his arms thrust upward in a gesture of triumph.

Transferred to Treasure Island

By the following March, HomeRise had hired Prasad as a counselor, according to a follow-up story in the Bay Area Reporter. In interviews for that article and others, he framed his work as a continuation of his peer advocacy in prison. “I like socializing with the residents,” he said. “It’s really overwhelming to help people.”

Living in the Tenderloin could be overstimulating, he added, noting that “people have sex everywhere — on the side of the road, in an alley.”

Staffing records obtained by the Chronicle show that Prasad worked at HomeRise’s Arnett Watson Apartments in the Tenderloin for a period in 2023, and former HomeRise staff told reporters he was transferred later that year to Island Bay Homes on Treasure Island. It’s unclear what prompted his transfer.

Christina Ewing, 42, said she first met Prasad in 2023 in one of the blue bungalows that served as HomeRise’s residential services office on Treasure Island, just a two-minute walk from the apartment she shared with her husband and teenage daughter.

“He seemed like a cool person to talk to,” Ewing said. At some point during their conversations, she remembers that she asked Prasad if he had a criminal record, and that he “explicitly” told her no.

Ewing also told Prasad she sometimes performed sexual favors in exchange for money. He then asked her if she would have anal sex with him for $100, she said.

A mother of a teenage daughter, Ewing said she receives $192 in food stamps per month, an amount equaling roughly $2.10 per day for each person in her family. Despite getting rent assistance, money is always tight, so she performs tasks to cover basic expenses, usually odd jobs like cleaning homes or doing laundry for her disabled neighbor. But Ewing told reporters she also performs sexual acts as a “last resort.”

Ewing told Prasad she needed to think about it, then spent a week weighing her options. The thought of having anal sex for money disturbed her, and she was intimidated by Prasad’s height and build; further, his job as a case manager gave her pause. But she was swayed by his offer of $100, a huge sum for a family barely able to afford food. She said she agreed to have sex with him.

Before they met up at the HomeRise offices, Ewing said that Prasad told her she could change her mind: “‘If you say no, I’ll stop, I’ll respect you.’”

Prasad told Ewing to lock the front door of the bungalow, she said, then took her into his office and closed the door. They began to have sex, but almost immediately Ewing felt uncomfortable and scared. She said she told Prasad “Stop” and “No.” He refused, telling her he was “almost done.”

He finished, and Ewing went to the bathroom to clean up. While she was inside, she heard a knock on the front door. She said she answered the door to a maintenance worker, who asked, “Why is the door locked?”

The rest of the afternoon passed in a haze, Ewing said. She knows she went straight home, but doesn’t remember much else.

Ewing said she deliberated for a week before visiting Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, where she underwent an exam for sexual assault, the records of which she provided to the Chronicle. She brought a friend as a witness, who confirmed Ewing’s account to reporters. The documents show that medical staff listed her as having been assaulted, and prescribed her doxycycline, an antibiotic commonly used to treat sexually transmitted infections. The exam did not capture DNA evidence, she said.

S.F. General operates a rape treatment center in its emergency department, and its staff members are required to report alleged cases of sexual assault to law enforcement. Ewing said she spoke with a victim advocate at the hospital and gave them Prasad’s name, occupation and other details, but did not file a formal police report.

A representative for SFPD confirmed it received a report regarding an alleged assault on Oct. 30, 2023. A member of the police department collected the exam, but the representative said the agency had no record of the victim speaking with officers.

That week, Ewing said, she also recounted what Prasad did to her to Sarah Dias-Deragon, HomeRise’s resident services manager for Island Bay Homes. She recalled that Dias-Deragon reacted sympathetically. “She thought it was really sad,” Ewing said.

Supportive housing units managed by the nonprofit HomeRise on Treasure Island.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle

“This is a person who is inappropriate,” she said she thought to herself. “I need to keep my eye out to protect the population of the building.”

Milli Harding, a former resident services counselor at the HomeRise-operated Jazzie Collins Apartments, says she reported case manager Salesh “Sal” Prasad’s alleged misconduct to multiple supervisors. Photo by Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle

A resident of Jazzie Collins Apartments who said Salesh “Sal” Prasad repeatedly asked her to show him her genitalia and propositioned her for sex. Photo by Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle

Within months, Harding said, she reported Prasad to two supervisors, including the building supervisor the Chronicle spoke to, saying he had frequently made lewd sexual comments to residents and co-workers alike. She never heard anything more.

Residents were left to face the case manager alone.

Mary Beth Naipo in her room at Jazzie Collins Apartments.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle

Prasad was “relentless” from day one, recalled Mary Beth Naipo, a longtime tenant of Jazzie Collins. He would follow her, demanding hugs and pressuring her to discuss sexual positions. So overt and incessant were Prasad’s advances that Naipo’s male friend offered to act as her boyfriend to ward him off. The ploy worked, she said, and Prasad shifted his focus to her neighbors.

Tiersa Myers, 31, a former client of Prasad’s, said he twice paid her for sex last year, meeting her in her room at Jazzie Collins. After she initially rebuffed him, he pursued her aggressively, she said, wearing her down. In one instance, Myers said, Prasad gave her $20 and some cigarettes for sex, leaving her ashamed. She said she began to blame herself for Prasad’s misconduct, so she never reported it.

Another resident, whom the Chronicle is not identifying in this story in accordance with its policy against naming alleged victims of sexual misconduct without their consent, said Prasad repeatedly asked her to show him her genitalia and propositioned her for sex.

She said she reported Prasad’s misconduct to multiple HomeRise staff members around 2024. She grew so fearful of him, she said, that when her daughter visited her apartment on days Prasad was working, she insisted they stay together for safety at all times.

HomeRise has long struggled to adequately recruit and retain qualified case managers, and for periods while he worked at Jazzie Collins, the nonprofit’s organizational charts suggest Prasad was just one of two case managers for the building’s nearly 100 residents. Sometimes, that meant he was the only one available on site.

“(Prasad) was the only case manager here,” the resident said, “so we had to go to him.”

In a statement, HomeRise told the Chronicle that it budgets for three case managers at Jazzie Collins, but that “as with many permanent supportive housing providers, staffing levels at any given point can be affected by vacancies, recruitment challenges, leave, and turnover.”

In March, the Chronicle reported on the death of Eric McCain, a Jazzie Collins resident who was found decomposing in his room last November after building staff failed to perform routine wellness checks on his unit, then falsified records to cover up the lapses, according to a HomeRise internal investigation.

Medical records show Prasad was McCain’s case manager prior to his resignation.

Amina Alexander-Banta, mother of Eric McCain, looks at a photograph as she arrives for a memorial in Colma on March 14. McCain, 54, was found decomposed in his room at Jazzie Collins Apartments, one of 17 supportive housing complexes managed by HomeRise in San Francisco, after he was not seen for days in violation of the nonprofit’s wellness-check policy.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle

‘Proof’ and delays

Around Sept. 16, 2025, Jazzie Collins tenant Kimberly Sears approached Ajisebutu, then a member of the residential services team, in the complex’s offices. Crying, she said Prasad had assaulted her.

Ajisebutu took the tenant to a private space, then asked whether she would write a statement so Ajisebutu could “escalate the situation.” Sears did not provide one, Ajisebutu later wrote.

Ajisebutu asked Natali Medina, Jazzie Collins’ site manager, what to do next. Medina told Ajisebutu that until she obtained “proof” of the alleged assault, she should not report it to their superiors, HomeRise’s report on the incident shows. This directive, the city later found, was a direct violation of HomeRise’s mandated reporter policy, which requires that employees immediately notify a supervisor after a resident informs them of an alleged instance of sexual harassment or assault.

Ajisebutu appears to have followed Medina’s advice, concluding that Sears’ account lacked sufficient details for HomeRise to proceed. “I did not investigate or make promises of outcome,” she wrote in her eventual report.

Nearly two weeks went by before two HomeRise employees instructed Ajisebutu on Sept. 29 to “immediately file” a mandated report describing Sears’ allegation. She filed it on Oct. 1, the same day she reported the incident to San Francisco police, records show.

Kimberly Sears is a resident at Jazzie Collins Apartments who said Salesh “Sal” Prasad propositioned her for sex in a threatening manner in late 2025.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle

In an interview, Sears said that Prasad had approached her in a threatening manner on the first floor of Jazzie Collins and pressured her for oral sex. She said she refused and fled.

While not meeting the definition for sexual assault, which typically requires physical contact, the incident “f— me up,” Sears said. A survivor of multiple sexual assaults and years spent living on the streets, the 60-year-old said Prasad’s aggressive advances, coupled with HomeRise’s inaction, destroyed the security she’d felt upon finally moving into her own apartment.

“I’ve been through a lot of s—, and I thought I was safe here,” she said, starting to cry. “What really bothers me is, why didn’t they do anything?”

Ajisebutu was transferred to Arnett Watson Apartments “for related safety concerns” on Oct. 2, records show. Around the same time, Medina was transferred “due to concerns for her personal safety in relation to Mr. Prasad,” emails obtained by the Chronicle show.

Reporters reviewed screenshots of text messages in which employees confirmed Prasad had been placed under investigation for allegedly “assaulting a resident.” One read: “He needs to be placed on leave then terminated. Medina is saying she reported something to HR. She is scared.”

HomeRise opened an internal investigation into Prasad on Oct. 1, the same day Ajisebutu filed reports with the city’s homelessness department and police, but allowed Prasad to continue working in the building without restrictions until Oct. 7, three weeks after Sears originally reported him, according to a letter the city sent to HomeRise. Even then, he was told only to “refrain from going to the residential floors” of the building. He had access to the main floors, including the offices, until he resigned on Oct. 8.

Eventually, city staff learned that HomeRise’s delay in reporting may have led to further incidents: Security camera footage captured Prasad entering the room of another tenant, Kimberly Ducksworth, on Sept. 26, in violation of HomeRise policy.

A mother of two with a history of homelessness and learning disabilities, Ducksworth, 34, calls herself “Energy” due to her boundless amounts of it. She dreams of one day leaving her tiny one-bedroom for a larger apartment with a Section 8 voucher, so her children, who currently live with their father’s side of the family, can move in with her.

Kimberly Ducksworth is a resident of Jazzie Collins Apartments who alleged harassment by former building case manager Salesh “Sal” Prasad.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle

Almost from their first interaction, she said, Prasad repeatedly asked her to help him find someone to have anal sex with, offering her money in exchange. He would also ask if she or one of her friends wanted to go on a date. Ducksworth said she kept telling Prasad no, but found that “he didn’t understand what ‘no’ meant.”

Through a public records request, the Chronicle obtained a heavily redacted March 2026 report that HomeRise staff authored into allegations of misconduct against Prasad. Reporters also obtained an unredacted report authored by the city’s homelessness department investigating HomeRise’s response to the alleged incidents.

HomeRise’s records indicate that Ducksworth later told staff Prasad had “brushed up” against her and propositioned her for sex. The city’s report categorized the allegations as involving “harassment/assault.”

The city’s report did not make any findings as to the allegations against Prasad. Rather, it determined that he violated HomeRise’s rules when he entered Ducksworth’s room, that HomeRise failed to report allegations made against him in a timely manner, and that the nonprofit failed in its duty to “effectively and adequately communicate and collaborate with HSH to prevent, de-escalate, investigate, and respond to incidents of violence.”

Even after staff found the footage of Prasad entering Ducksworth’s room, the incident was “never properly reported or documented” in HomeRise’s systems, the city later found. Nor did staff members file an incident report, documents show. Instead, the homelessness department likely learned of the allegations in November, when HomeRise staff sent it information that “appeared to reference” a case that differed from Sears’.

The city’s official report diverges in some cases from both HomeRise’s investigation and Chronicle interviews with alleged victims and staff; at times, the city report appears to mix up Ducksworth’s and Sears’ accounts.

In a document prepared by the homelessness department last December titled “Summary: HomeRise Recent and Ongoing Challenges and Concerns,” department staff noted that “HomeRise has not been forthcoming or communicative” about the incidents, and that there had been “No known (follow-up) on other tenants alleging assault.”

In all, it took five months for HomeRise to submit its report on the two allegations — and once it did, city authorities identified further discrepancies.

HomeRise leaders had requested extensions from the city on their report, citing the ongoing nature of their investigation into Prasad. But when HomeRise filed its report, it stated that the internal investigation had concluded in mid-October, shortly after Prasad resigned.

In December, as the homelessness department awaited further information from HomeRise, a short film about Prasad premiered at San Francisco’s Roxie Theater.

Produced in partnership with the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, “Off the Record: Sal” depicts Prasad teaching American Sign Language classes to Jazzie Collins residents. The screening ended with a Q&A moderated by the musician, filmmaker and activist Boots Riley. In April, “Off the Record: Sal” screened at the Cleveland International Film Festival, qualifying it for submission to the Academy Awards.

By the time the film debuted, Prasad had found another job — as a case manager at Bay Area Community Services, a supportive housing operator in the East Bay with clients similar to HomeRise’s.

Contacted for this story, Joshua Mizrahi, an attorney for Bay Area Community Services, said the organization hadn’t known about any allegations of assault or misconduct prior to Prasad’s hiring. HomeRise, he said, had not disclosed such allegations during the organization’s background check.

After learning of the department of homelessness report, Bay Area Community Services took “immediate action,” Mizrahi said. On May 26, it fired Prasad.

Daniel Hennessy of the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley Journalism contributed to this report. 

This article was reported with the support of the Fund for Investigative Journalism and in partnership with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley Journalism.