Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) Programs

Searching for an affordable place to rent is a significant challenge for low-income residents. Information and applications are often paper-based and different for every property. Doorway works to unify these processes to make finding an affordable home easier and faster across the region.

Doorway centers on the Doorway Housing Portal, a website for Bay Area residents to find and apply for affordable housing. For more information, see the Doorway Housing Portal fact sheet.

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

The Regional Affordable Housing Pipeline, created in collaboration with Enterprise Community Partners, is an inventory of all Bay Area affordable housing developments currently in progress. The 2024 pipeline report identified 40,896 affordable homes in various stages of pre-development. But there is a gap of $9.7 billion needed to build these homes. BAHFA and other local and regional organizations use the pipeline inventory to measure the scope of financial need in the region.

Read this year’s updated Pipeline brief published in May 2024, describing the inventory of all affordable housing developments currently in progress. 

For more information on Pipeline methodology and other detail about the inventory,  contact Ruben Anguiano at ranguiano@bayareametro.gov. 

Affordable Housing Preservation is the process of mission-driven organizations or residents buying and/or renovating homes where people with low and moderate incomes already live, often with the help of a public sector investment. 

Preservation projects may include the following:

1. Buying market-rate rental properties, often referred to as “unsubsidized affordable housing,” and converting them to deed-restricted affordable housing.
2. Renewing restrictions on existing deed-restricted affordable housing before they expire, often referred to as “expiring-use affordable housing.”
3. Rehabilitating any type of affordable housing to address habitability issues and extend the life of the property.

Preservation of existing affordable housing provides invaluable benefits to low- and moderate-income residents and communities at large, including:

1. Preventing displacement of existing residents.
2. Ensuring long-term affordability for future residents.
3. Improving building conditions and residents’ quality of life.
4. Supporting the stability, diversity and vitality of communities.
5. Offering the opportunity in some cases for tenants to enter into homeownership or cooperative ownership.

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

In less than two years, this program has assisted seven developments, preserving the affordability of nearly 800 homes and establishing permanent deed restrictions that protect existing residents from displacement.  

The Housing Preservation Pilot preserves affordable housing and protects residents by helping mission-driven housing developers buy and rehabilitate residential properties, which are then converted to permanently affordable housing. This pilot is funded by the Regional Early Action Planning (REAP) Grant (REAP 2.0) from the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

BAHFA released the Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for this pilot on June 10, 2024. Read more in the NOFA.

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 help 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 programs and pilots, contact Somaya Abdelgany at sabdelgany@bayareametro.gov.

Limited data is available on evictions in the Bay Area, making it challenging to design and evaluate local policies and programs to prevent displacement. BAHFA is working in partnership with a research collaborative led by Centro Legal de la Raza to collect and analyze eviction and legal service data throughout the region to better understand causes, household characteristics and additional conditions of evictions. Results are expected in early 2025 and are intended to guide the development of data-driven displacement prevention strategies. To learn more about this study, read the news release and watch the launch webinar. 

In November 2023, BAHFA awarded $5 million to the Napa County Housing and Homeless Services Department through a competitive process to design and administer a homelessness prevention pilot program. The program is focused on seniors and people with disabilities who are at risk of homelessness. The pilot will provide rent subsidies to participants for up to four years, as well as social services and housing assistance to make sure they stay housed. The pilot is anticipated to begin serving clients in mid-2024. Read the funding award announcement. 

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