The attorney at the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco is two weeks away from leaving her post as the outreach coordinator for RAD, the acronym for the federal government's "Rental Assistance Demonstration" scheme, which may lead all of the country's public housing to become at least partially privatized.

RAD could mean fewer bedbugs, more dependable elevators and other fixes to problems that plague the city's 6,000-plus public housing units. But some tenants and housing rights activists are worried the program is just another step toward dismantling public housing altogether.

Smallwood says it's been tough getting tenants excited about the possibility of improved living conditions when they've "been promised multiple times over the years that their buildings are going to get better . . . With a lot of residents, it's 'Well, I'll believe it when I see it.' "

Smallwood herself grew up in public housing in town and describes how, in addition to wariness about "improvements," tenants also have a lot of fear related to displacement. San Francisco's current housing crisis isn't helping. Rents continue to rise ever higher - one-bedroom apartments average $3,000-plus per month here - and in January, when the city opened its public housing waitlist to homeless people for the first time in six years, the list ballooned to almost 18,000 in just six days.