LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired of San Francisco Seeks Its Way through a Storm, but May Hit the Rocks

by Chris Danielsen

The San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired (LightHouse) has recently been the subject of public protests, internal unrest, and questions about its financial health and management practices. The Braille Monitor first reported on these matters in an Early Access article in July 2025, which can be read at https://nfb.org/resources/publications-and-media/braille-monitor/early-access-articles/beacon-over-troubled-waters. The following is a recap of some key facts from that article and some important recent developments.

Financial Challenges and Sustainability Efforts

Since Fiscal Year 2023, LightHouse has been running operating deficits exceeding $10 million annually, projected at $14–15 million this year, according to its interim CEO, Brandon Cox, who granted this magazine an hour-long interview at the end of July after the publication of our Early Access article. Mr. Cox, who is not blind and has a long but controversial history in rehabilitation, said the agency is covering these deficits through its $80 million cash portfolio—remnants of a $125 million bequest received a decade ago that allowed LightHouse to purchase and renovate its headquarters building—but warned that “drawing $15 million annually means the nest egg will shrink quickly.” He attributed much of the shortfall to the high cost of operating in the Bay Area and inadequate reimbursement rates from state vocational rehabilitation contracts for services such as orientation and mobility and independent living training. Tim Elder, president of the National Federation of the Blind of California, told the Monitor that he believes overspending on capital projects at the headquarters and the agency’s rural Enchanted Hills Camp also contributed to the problem, and others in the area blind community and beyond agree.

In May of 2024, the City of San Francisco terminated its lease on the first eight floors of the 1155 Market Street headquarters building, a prime piece of downtown real estate. That lease had been providing the revenue to service a $48 million mortgage covering that part of the building, which had been split into two parcels in the original purchase agreement. The loan contained an automatic default clause triggered by the city’s lease termination. This resulted in LightHouse seeing the property’s market value decline by $17 million. The organization continues to own the top three floors of the eleven-story building outright and debt-free, while the lower floors are now in receivership. Not only did LightHouse purchase the downtown building, in an area mostly occupied by for-profit entities including high-tech companies, but also hired blind architect Chris Downey to redesign it and oversee renovations. That move garnered a segment on 60 Minutes and other positive coverage at the time. There was little if any talk of the risks involved in San Francisco’s notoriously volatile real estate market, but they have now materialized with a vengeance.

Mr. Cox confirmed that LightHouse has been running deficits since 2023 and has responded with cost-cutting measures including office closures and layoffs, which have been a source of consternation for agency employees and clients. The North Coast office has closed, and the Ed Roberts Campus location will close in 2026, though services in Alameda County will continue through community partnerships, Mr. Cox said in July, although later events described below call all future plans into question.

Concerns of the Deafblind Community and LightHouse Response

The Northern California Association of the DeafBlind (NCADB) is leading a “Decertify LightHouse Now” campaign. The effort seeks to revoke LightHouse’s certification to administer the National DeafBlind Equipment Distribution Program (NDBEDP), also known as iCanConnect, in the state of California. The campaign has filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which provides and oversees the program’s federal funds, seeking said decertification. The campaign alleges systemic mismanagement, retaliation, and discrimination against deafblind clients and employees. It cites the termination or reassignment of staff who allegedly raised various concerns, including Kathy Abrahamson, Sook Hee Choi, Sequence Gilder, and Mussie Gebre. Mr. Gebre filed an informal complaint with the FCC in September 2023 alleging rule violations and whistleblower retaliation. He was fired from the agency three days later. In its responses to the FCC, LightHouse maintains that it terminated his employment for cause. In January of 2025, the FCC dismissed Gebre’s claims for damages but allowed the administrative case to proceed. Based on the Monitor’s review of available documents on the FCC website, the case is still in its discovery phase, and no final decision has been issued. Mr. Gebre also filed a wrongful termination lawsuit in California Superior Court in August of 2025.

The Decertify LightHouse Now campaign says it supports transfer of the entire iCanConnect program to the Helen Keller National Center for DeafBlind Youths and Adults. But this agency has its own shortcomings, specifically its lack of deafblind leadership. The Federation consequently passed Resolution 2025-04 at our most recent Convention, demanding better deafblind representation.

The Decertify LightHouse Now campaign makes numerous and serious accusations on its website, but it does not refer to sources for many of them, and the Braille Monitor has been unable to verify them through public records. LightHouse leadership asserts that most claims made by the Decertify LightHouse Now campaign are inaccurate or unverified, and that the organization remains in good standing with the FCC and the iCanConnect program. Mr. Cox emphasized that confidentiality and ongoing legal proceedings prevent public rebuttal of specific allegations but maintained that LightHouse’s policies protect whistleblowers and prohibit retaliation. Staff may report concerns through multiple channels, including the HR department, the CEO, the board president, or the third-party co-employer ADP. LightHouse provided its written policies outlining these procedures to the Braille Monitor. Mr. Cox further argued that few of the complaints now being made in the public or the press were ever raised internally through these documented processes.

Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining

In September 2023, around the time of Mr. Gebre’s firing, LightHouse employees formed LightHouse United, affiliating with the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 29, to advocate for higher wages and greater job security. Workers voted 50–22 to unionize. The process appeared contentious at its start, with LightHouse initially seeming to reject the need for a union and, according to union representatives, engaging in bad-faith stalling and union-busting tactics. The union even filed an official complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, although it was settled within a few months. After nearly two years, LightHouse and the union reached a tentative Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) on October 2, 2025. As relayed to the Monitor by an email from LightHouse spokesperson Heather Sorensen, the agreement includes staggered wage increases—5 percent for the lowest-paid staff, 4 percent for mid-range, and 3 percent for higher earners—effective October 1, 2025, along with negotiation reopeners tied to a proposed merger with Lighthouse Guild that the LightHouse SF Board of Directors is currently considering. Mr. Cox told a town hall meeting held on November 12, 2025, the main purpose of which was to discuss the merger proposal, that the CBA approval process had just been completed, with the LightHouse Board of Directors having just voted to approve the CBA the day before.

Governance, Leadership, and Diversity

LightHouse has seen substantial leadership turnover in the past three years. Bryan Bashin, a member of the Federation, now with Be My Eyes, was the CEO at the time of the $125 million bequest and purchase of the headquarters building, but resigned in 2022. Sharon Giovinazo then took over for three years before resigning at the end of March 2025 to focus on a battle with cancer, according to her LinkedIn profile. Mr. Cox, now Interim CEO, said in July that while all this change is challenging, it is not a crisis. In late summer, the LightHouse board of directors launched a national search for a permanent CEO and set up a search committee on which Tim Elder was serving. The search has since been paused pending the merger discussions with Lighthouse Guild. The board also aims for at least half its members to be blind or low-vision, Cox said. Two of nine current executives identify as blind or low-vision, he said. The Board of Directors page on the LightHouse website lists eighteen individuals, including Federationists Tim Elder (also president of the NFB of California), Jamie Principato Crane, and Kathryn Webster. The board chair is Jennison Asuncion, who is blind. However, the details of the proposed merger, as outlined in the November 12 meeting, indicate that the result might not be a blind-led agency; see below for more details.

Exploration of Merger with Lighthouse Guild

In the past two months, the LightHouse Board of Directors has been exploring a partnership or merger with Lighthouse Guild, which is based in New York and led by its new President and CEO, Thomas Panek, the first blind person to hold that position. Readers may remember Mr. Panek’s presentation to the 2025 National Convention and his previous service as CEO of Guiding Eyes for the Blind, the only guide dog school to financially sponsor the Federation’s Rideshare Rally in October of 2024. Mr. Panek told a town-hall-style meeting that LightHouse held on September 16, 2025, that he reached out to offer collaboration after learning of LightHouse’s recent challenges. That meeting was largely a feel-good affair, with a lot of emphasis on the idea that the two entities were only in an exploratory phase and on Mr. Panek’s accomplishments and expressed good intentions. Jim Dubin, the Lighthouse Guild’s board chair, also projected helpfulness and goodwill. Nonetheless, this writer and other attendees detected a strong whiff of the medical model of disability in the Lighthouse Guild’s programs and its pitch to the LightHouse SF community. Lighthouse Guild’s website speaks of patients instead of clients, and its history page says that the entity was formed by a merger of Jewish Guild Healthcare and Lighthouse International.

The follow-up meeting on November 12 mentioned above, which Mr. Panek did not attend apparently because of a last-minute circumstance, was much more startling. Mr. Dubin—who according to his bio page on the Lighthouse Guild website recently retired from a long career as a high-powered corporate lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions and other corporate matters, as well as a CEO of for-profit companies—made abundantly clear that his concept of the merger was essentially a takeover, with the current LightHouse SF board reduced to an advisory capacity and a new LightHouse CEO, if and when appointed, reporting to Mr. Panek. When Mr. Dubin’s statements did not go down well with attendees, Mr. Cox weighed in with dire predictions that walking away from the merger proposal would result in further drastic cuts to LightHouse staff and services. Despite his nice-guy demeanor, Mr. Cox’s statements seemed to this writer like an attempt to put the squeeze on opponents of the deal.

The reaction of attendees who asked questions, such as National Federation of the Blind of California Secretary Shannon Dillon and former American Council of the Blind President Chris Gray, mostly ranged from skeptical to hostile, with the understandable concern being that such an arrangement of governance from three thousand miles away would not best serve the needs of the local blind community. In response to questions about specific programs, Mr. Dubin would not guarantee that any of them would continue as is.
 
The next day, an open letter to the LightHouse board of directors opposing the merger from former LightHouse SF directors and others (not including anyone officially representing our California affiliate) was published. That letter said in part: “We recognize and empathize with the financial crisis currently facing [San Francisco LightHouse]. However, we firmly believe that the responsible course of action is to directly confront and resolve these fiscal challenges, rather than abdicating stewardship through an arrangement that risks the value, autonomy, and mission of our organization. Any proposed partnership, once executed, would be irreversible. Furthermore, with the board’s attention entirely focused on the [Lighthouse Guild] relationship, you have no remaining bandwidth to identify and evaluate possible alternatives to the proposed relationship. We urge you to focus on fixing our LightHouse rather than on giving it away.”  

Conclusion: A Moment of Reckoning

The allegations of Decertify LightHouse Now are serious and disturbing, but as yet they have not been tested by independent, outside reviews. The campaign clearly does not trust any internal process at LightHouse to rectify issues, and LightHouse cannot discuss employee matters due to confidentiality laws, all of which makes it hard for this magazine to verify claims that are usually not attributed to specific people. What is clear is that the agency burned through tens of millions of dollars and that its property lost value, leaving it struggling in the aftermath. Whether through genuine malfeasance or bold but risky decisions that turned out badly, the agency’s stabilization plan has involved layoffs and office closures. Anxiety and mistrust among many of its consumers, employees, and supporters are understandable. What remains to be seen is whether LightHouse can successfully defend its actions, stabilize its finances and service delivery, and restore the trust that it has lost. So far, its proposed solution, other than rearranging the proverbial deck chairs, is the merger with Lighthouse Guild.

The National Federation of the Blind has said consistently throughout our history, most recently and thoroughly in Resolution 2020-05, that any private agency serving the blind must be “responsive to the interests, needs, and aspirations of its constituency.” (Indeed, Resolution 2020-05 calls for half of the management team and board of directors of private agencies to be blind people, which is not the case for either LightHouse or Lighthouse Guild, although LightHouse’s interim CEO has said it aspires to such parity on its board.) It appears to this writer that LightHouse, whatever the legal accuracy of individual accusations and however well-intentioned individuals serving on its staff or board may be, is not currently responsive to its community or headed in a direction that indicates it will be. Too many of its constituents simply do not trust the agency, and that is the ultimate test.

That said, our California affiliate, which is closest to the situation, has not issued its own official position, although it did link to the open letter referenced above on its Facebook page. We will update our readers if and when the National Federation of the Blind of California speaks officially on the matter.

We welcome letters to the editor, article submissions, or news tips that provide further information or context on LightHouse and its troubles, and we will keep our readers advised of further developments. Send letters, comments, or news tips to [email protected]. For further information, please consult our submission guidelines at https://nfb.org/braille-monitor.