Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) Programs

Searching for an affordable home in the Bay Area is much harder and more time-consuming than it should be. It is often paper-based, different for every property, and with unclear eligibility criteria and placement processes.

Doorway centers on the Doorway Housing Portal, a website for Bay Area residents that will make housing applications much easier. For more information, see the Doorway Housing Portal fact sheet.

The Doorway Housing Portal allows people applying for housing to:

• Search on their phone or computer and complete an application in less than 10 minutes
• Quickly determine upfront if they are qualified for affordable housing
• Apply for multiple listings at once
• Get up-to-date lottery, wait list and placement information

The Doorway Housing Portal also simplifies the lease-up process for housing developers and property managers, while providing important data about affordable housing demand to policymakers in the Bay Area.

Visit the Doorway Housing Portal website at housingbayarea.mtc.ca.gov.

For more information about Doorway, contact Barry Roeder at broeder@bayareametro.gov.

The Regional Affordable Housing Pipeline (Pipeline) is an inventory of all Bay Area affordable housing developments that are currently in progress, but for which not all funding is secured. Without sufficient funding, these developments cannot begin construction.

Created in partnership with Enterprise Community Partners, the Pipeline is a critical housing development and financing planning tool. The Pipeline can provide information about:

• Where affordable housing is intended to be built over the next few years, and
• The amount of funding necessary to get the projects completed.

Read the first Pipeline brief published in February 2023, describing the inventory of all affordable housing developments currently in progress.

Why Haven’t Pipeline Projects Secured All the Funding Needed to Get Built?

Affordable housing is a community benefit that serves households that can’t pay market-rate housing costs. This includes seniors living on Social Security, people with disabilities, low-wage workers, and homeless individuals and families.

Public financial subsidies are necessary to build affordable housing, but these sources of money are limited. Developers must find multiple sources of funding, which can extend the number of years it takes to complete a new affordable housing project.

If Bay Area Voters Pass a 2024 Affordable Housing Bond Measure, Will That Be Enough to Fund All the Pipeline Projects?

No, but a 2024 housing bond measure would provide every Bay Area county with significantly more funding than is currently available, and it would make a huge difference in the amount of affordable housing the Bay Area can build. 

Where Does the Pipeline Data Come From?

Information on affordable housing developments in the Pipeline is collected from several sources:

• State-provided public data on applicants and awards of affordable housing financing programs
• Local public data from city and county housing departments and authorities
• Private/commercial data from affordable housing developers and financial consultants

The data was processed to ensure unique records and the most up-to-date development information.

How Often is the Pipeline Updated?

The data was collected once in 2020 and again in 2022.

Efforts are in place to streamline the data collection process and update the Pipeline every year.

Is This Data Publicly Available? How Can I Access This Data?

Read the first Pipeline brief published in February 2023, describing the inventory of all affordable housing developments currently in progress.

For more information about the Regional Affordable Housing Pipeline, contact Ruben Anguiano at ranguiano@bayareametro.gov.

About Affordable Housing Preservation

Housing preservation has three main components:

1. It repairs and restores the physical conditions of existing buildings,
2. It protects the households living in those buildings from displacement; and
3. In most cases, it converts buildings that have unrestricted use to permanently affordable housing through a new deed restriction.

Mission-driven developers and community land trusts typically preserve a building by:

1. Buying it in a market transaction,
2. Rehabilitating it,
3. Protecting existing residents, and
4. Restricting future occupancy to low- or moderate-income residents.

This preservation type almost always requires a public sector investment.

BAHFA Preservation Programs

Most low-income Bay Area families live in unsubsidized rental properties. When monthly rent goes up, these families are at risk of losing their homes  when housing expenses become more than they can afford.

The goal of the two BAHFA preservation programs is to help stabilize communities and keep families in their homes.

The Welfare Tax Exemption Preservation Program and the Housing Preservation Pilot (funded through the Regional Early Action Planning REAP 2.0 program) will assist affordable housing developers and community land trusts (CLTs) with the acquisition and rehabilitation of existing housing. BAHFA also helps administer the Bay Area Preservation Pilot (BAPP), a revolving loan fund managed by the Low Income Investment Fund and Enterprise Community Loan Fund.

These programs will help current – and future – residents stay in their homes long-term by guaranteeing that they are affordable and stay that way.

The Welfare Tax Exemption Preservation Program provides public sector support that mission-driven developers need to qualify for property tax relief under state laws.

BAHFA is planning to launch a Housing Preservation Pilot in 2023 to offer over-the-counter financing to non-profit developers and community land trusts to acquire and rehabilitate residential properties occupied by low- and moderate-income residents. It will prioritize projects in historically marginalized communities and near existing or planned public transit.

Funding is expected from the Regional Early Action Planning (REAP) 2.0 grant from the state of California.

BAHFA helps administer the Bay Area Preservation Pilot (BAPP), a revolving loan fund managed by the Low Income Investment Fund and Enterprise Community Loan Fund. This fund is designed to assist mission-driven developers and community-based organizations with the acquisition and preservation of unsubsidized affordable housing in areas with high-frequency transit service.

For more information about the housing preservation pilots, contact Somaya Abdelgany at sabdelgany@bayareametro.gov.

About Tenant Protections

BAHFA’s founding legislation, the San Francisco Bay Area Regional Housing Finance Act, states that at least 5% of Bond funds must be used for tenant protection programs, including:

• Pre-eviction and eviction legal services, counseling, training and renter education to improve habitability and protect against displacement.
• Emergency rental assistance for lower income households.
• Homelessness prevention services.
• Relocation assistance.
• Information tracking related to displacement, displacement risk, rents and evictions

However, the California Constitution currently prohibits the use of GO bond funds for these purposes. If state law does not allow for bond proceeds to fund Tenant Protections at the time of expenditure, the minimum allocation for Tenant Protections may be modified and redistributed to other expenditure categories as prescribed in the Act. If the California Constitution changes through a separate voter-approved measure to remove this restriction, at least five percent of Bond proceeds will be used toward eligible tenant protections.

Anti-Displacement & Homelessness Prevention Pilots

The Anti-Displacement and Homelessness Prevention pilots will focus on ways to improve policies and programs that improve:

• Tenant protection
• Homelessness prevention

BAHFA is in the research and planning process to develop these pilot projects.

For more information about Anti-Displacement Pilots, contact Irene Farnsworth at Ifarnsworth@bayareametro.gov.