Doorway Housing Portal Privacy Policy

The effective date of this Privacy Policy is June 29, 2023. Last updated May 14, 2026.

Overview

The Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (“BAHFA”), Metropolitan Transportation Commission (“MTC”) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (“ABAG”) (referred to individually as “Agency” or collectively as the “Agencies”) respect your privacy and are committed to protecting it through our compliance with this policy.

This policy describes the types of information the Agencies may collect from you or that you may provide when you visit the websites housingbayarea.org, housingbayarea.mtc.ca.gov or partners.housingbayarea.mtc.ca.gov (individually and collectively referred to as the "Website") and the Agencies’ practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting, and disclosing that information.

This policy applies to information the Agencies collect:

• On the Website.
• In email, text, and other electronic messages between you and the Website.
• Through paper applications submitted to the Agencies if the Applicant (defined below) has consented to the information collected in the paper application being uploaded to the Website to create a User profile and account.

It does not apply to information collected by any third party, including through any application hosted on another website or content, that may be linked to or be accessible from or on the Website.

Please read this policy carefully to understand the Agencies’ policies and practices regarding your information and how the Agencies will treat it. If you do not agree with these policies and practices, your choice is not to use the Website. By accessing or using this Website, you agree to this privacy policy. This policy may change from time to time (see Changes to The Privacy Policy). Your continued use of this Website after changes are made is deemed to be acceptance of those changes, so please check the policy periodically for updates.

Minors

The Website is not intended for individuals under 18 years of age. No minor may provide any information to or on the Website without parental or legal guardian consent. If the Agencies learn about collection or receipt of PII from a minor without verification of parental or legal guardian consent, the Agencies will delete that information. If you believe the Agencies might have any information from or about a minor without parental or legal guardian consent, please contact us at:

Bay Area Housing Finance Authority
Attn: Privacy Officer
375 Beale Street, Suite 800
San Francisco, CA 94105
Or e-mail: privacyofficer@bayareametro.gov
Or call: 415-778-6700

Definitions

Affordable Housing

Housing for which the rent or purchase price is regulated by a public entity through a document recorded against the property where the housing is located.

Anonymized Data

Information from which PII (defined below) has been removed so that the individual cannot be identified. Anonymized Data is generally used by the Agencies for statistical analysis, reporting, improving the content of Agencies’ web services, and helping the Agencies understand how people are using Website services. Anonymized Data may be shared with third parties and published in any publicly available media.

Applicant

Individual who submits an application, including PII (defined below), with information about the Applicant and the Applicant’s household to secure Affordable Housing.  

Duplicate Household Member

An individual of at least eighteen years of age who either is an Applicant or listed as a household member by Applicant on two or more submitted applications for the same Listing.

Duplicate Application

An application that has listed a Duplicate Household Member.

Household Member

Individual who has been included on an application submitted by an Applicant as an individual who is either the Applicant or would reside with the Applicant at the Affordable Housing identified in the Listing.

Listing

Notice that Affordable Housing unit(s) is/are available for occupancy.

Local Government

Either a city, county or other public entity located within the San Francisco Bay Area, which is comprised of the City and County of San Francisco and the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma. 

Personal Identifiable Information (PII)

Information that identifies or describes a person or can be directly linked to a specific individual.  Examples of PII include, but are not limited to, name, email address, and telephone number. Please note that the Website does not collect social security numbers or bank account numbers for Applicants.    

Professional Partner

Individual or entity who owns or manages Affordable Housing and who seeks to sell or rent it to a qualified household.

User

Individual who accesses or uses the Website, such as a Visitor, Applicant, Professional Partner or Local Government. 

Visitor

Individual who visits the Website to view Affordable Housing Listings. 

Information The Agencies Collect About You and How They Collect It

The information that the Agencies collect depends upon what you do when you use the Website.  The Agencies collect several types of information from and about Users of the Website, including information:

• From an Applicant: The Agencies collect information directly from the Applicant or Applicant’s representative through form(s) completed by the Applicant, which may include PII from an Applicant and Household Members, such as, names, relationship to the Applicant, postal addresses, mailing addresses, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, current workplace jurisdictions, workplaces or school information, other sources of income, student status, household pre-tax income, monthly or annual income, housing unit preferences, veteran status, current or prior status of experiencing homelessness, race and ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation and limitations of any disability that impacts housing.
• From a Professional Partner: The Agencies collect information directly from a Professional Partner through the Website’s forms completed by the Professional Partner or their representative to collect name, representative’s name, mailing and billing address, telephone number, email address, website (if provided), and information about the Affordable Housing Listing.  
• From a Visitor:
  • If a Visitor emails a comment or inquiry, the Visitor’s name and email address as provided by the Visitor through the Website.
  • If a Visitor volunteers to subscribe to receive notification of new Listings through the Website’s use of a third-party digital subscription management service called GovDelivery, operated by Granicus, LLC, to allow individuals to subscribe to receive notifications of new Affordable Housing opportunities and the Agencies’ mailing lists as selected by the individual.  When using this service, a Visitor may also voluntarily provide their name and email address.  To find out more about GovDelivery and the Granicus privacy policy, visit the Granicus Subscriber Privacy Statement.
• From any User of the Website, the Agencies collect this information:
  • Directly from you when you provide it or someone on your behalf provides it to us.
  • Automatically as you navigate through the site. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies.

The information you provide above may be transmitted to other Users of the Website or third parties (collectively, "User Contributions"). User Contributions are transmitted at your own risk, including but not limited to, User Contributions from Applicants transmitted to Professional Partners and/or Local Governments. Although the Agencies limit access to certain pages, please be aware that no security measures are perfect or impenetrable. Additionally, the Agencies cannot control the actions of other Users of the Website with whom you may choose to share your User Contributions. Therefore, the Agencies cannot and do not guarantee that your User Contributions will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.

Information the Agencies Collect Through Automatic Data Collection Technologies.

As you navigate through and interact with the Website, the Agencies may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including:

• Details of your visits to the Website, including traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data and the resources that you access and use on the Website.
• Information about your computer and internet connection, including your internet protocol (IP) address, operating system, and browser type.  An IP address is a unique string of numbers that is assigned to a visitor’s computer, router or mobile device by their internet service provider. When you access the Website, the Agencies’ cloud platform provider collects your device’s IP address, the time and date of the visit, and the pages you visit.  This information is used to help diagnose and resolve system errors and to otherwise administer the Website. This information may be shared with third party service providers for these purposes.
• The Agencies also use a third-party traffic measurement service called Google Analytics to gather and compute website usage metrics.  Google Analytics collects Users’ IP addresses and the pages the Users are visiting.  Google Analytics may set a cookie that will enable it to function properly.  To find out more about Google Analytics’ privacy principles, visit the Google Analytics Privacy and Security Page.

The information the Agencies collect automatically may include PII, or the Agencies may maintain it or associate it with PII the Agencies collect in other ways or receive from third parties. It helps us to improve the Website and to deliver a better and more personalized service, including by enabling us to:

• Estimate the audience size and usage patterns.
• Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize the Website according to your individual interests.
• Speed up your searches.
• Recognize you when you return to the Website.

The technologies the Agencies use for this automatic data collection may include:

• Cookies (or browser cookies).  The Website stores “cookies,” which are small data elements that a website can store on a visitor’s computer or mobile devices when he or she visits.  A cookie file contains information that can identify information such as the IP address of the computer and network that a visitor uses to browse the Website, network traffic patterns, and browser software and operating system versions in order to customize the browsing experience and functionality of the Website. The visitor can refuse cookies or delete the cookie from their computer using any of the widely available methods.  Once a visitor leaves the Website, the privacy policy of other websites visited or linked-to from the Website should also be reviewed to understand how these external sites utilize cookies and how the information that is collected through the use of cookies on these websites is utilized.
• Web Beacons. Pages of the Website may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit the Agencies, for example, to count Users who have visited those pages and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity).

How The Agencies Use Your Information

The Agencies use information that they collect about you or that you provide to us, including any PII:

• To present the Website and its contents to you;
• To provide Applicants with information about Listings;
• To provide Professional Partners with information about Applicants to determine whether an Applicant qualifies as a moderate or low-income household eligible to purchase or rent the Professional Partner’s Listing, to conduct a lottery for a Listing, which is a process to prioritize selection of Applicants based on the Professional Partner’s marketing plan when demand for housing units exceed available units,  or to generate a waitlist for a Listing;
• If the Visitor provides PII to GovDelivery, GovDelivery may use the PII to send the Visitor information consistent with the visitor’s request;
• Use of Aggregated Data is to improve the Agencies’ understanding of housing demand and monitoring of equity in placement in Affordable Housing to inform deployment of additional housing resources;
• To provide you with notices about your account, including expiration and renewal notices;
• For Professional Partners, to carry out the obligations and enforce the rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection;
• For Local Governments to monitor compliance with a regulatory agreement or other deed restriction or local regulations;
• To notify you about changes to the Website or any services the Agencies offer or provide though it;
• To respond to a comment or inquiry;
• To identify and remove Duplicate Applications for a Listing;
• To run statistical analyses to identify trends in Local Governments’ efforts to comply with affirmatively further fair housing laws and to provide demand data to guide development of affordable housing programs and policies;
• In any other way the Agencies may describe when you provide the information; and
• For any other purpose with your consent.

The Agencies will not sell your PII to third parties for marketing purposes.

Disclosure of Your Information

The Agencies may disclose aggregated data about the Users, and information that does not identify any individual without restriction.

The Agencies may disclose PII that they collect, or that you provide as described in this privacy policy:

• For Applicants: to Professional Partners or their designated representative/agent for which the Applicant has submitted an application, and to the applicable Local Government; once PII is disclosed to a Professional Partner, the use and retention of the PII will be governed by the Professional Partner’s privacy policy, subject to the restrictions described in the Terms of Use.  
• For Professional Partners: designated representative’s contact information (name, email address, phone number and physical address) to potential Applicants and other Users of the Website.  
• To respond to a comment or inquiry.  Please note that, once provided, all comments and inquiries may be considered public records subject to public inspection. Comments may be published on the Website or included in written or electronic format in any publicly-available media.
• To contractors, service providers, and other third parties, including but not limited to Amazon Web Services (AWS), who the Agencies use to support the business and who are bound by contractual obligations to keep PII confidential and use it only for the purposes for which the Agencies disclose it to them.  See information on AWS’s privacy practices. Additionally, the Agencies use the web-based file sharing tool Box to share applications and lottery results with Professional Partners, when this information cannot be shared through Doorway Partners Portal.  See information on Box’s privacy practices.
• To fulfill the purpose for which you provide it.
• For any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information.
• With your consent.
• The Agencies may also disclose your PII to comply with any court order, law, audit or other legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request.

Choices About How The Agencies Use and Disclose Your Information

The Agencies strive to provide you with choices regarding the PII you provide to us. The Agencies have created mechanisms to provide you with the following control over your information: 

• Tracking Technologies and Advertising. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when cookies are being sent. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this site may then be inaccessible or not function properly.

The Agencies do not control third parties' collection or use of your information to serve interest-based advertising. However, these third parties may provide you with ways to choose not to have your information collected or used in this way. You can opt out of receiving targeted ads from members of the Network Advertising Initiative ("NAI") on the NAI's website.

Accessing, Correcting, and Retaining Your PII

You can review and change the PII stored in your account by logging into the Website and visiting your account profile page.  Visitors whose PII is included in Agencies’ mailing lists can update their email address at any time by entering their email in the subscription box, entering their optional password if established, clicking the “Subscriber Preferences” link, entering their new information and clicking the “Submit” button.

You may also send us an email at doorway@bayareametro.gov to request access to, correct, or delete any PII in your account that you have provided to us. The Agencies cannot delete your PII except by also deleting your User account. The Agencies cannot correct or delete any PII on an application for Affordable Housing once it has been submitted.  Submittal of an application to a Professional Partner or Local Government through the Website may result in either entity retaining the application including the PII submitted in the application.  PII will not be available to a Professional Partner or Local Government through the Website unless the Professional Partner or Local Government agrees that with respect to PII obtained through the Website, the Professional Partner or Local Government will comply with all applicable statutes, rules, regulations and orders of the United States, the State of California and applicable local regulations relating to the handling and confidentiality of the PII.  

The Agencies will retain Applicant’s most recent application with all PII for three years to facilitate pre-population of fields in subsequent applications and queries related to DHP account login problems and application confirmation. If an Applicant does not access their account for a period of three years or requests closure of their account, then name, email address(es), phone number(s), and unit number will be deleted; street address will be generalized to city, zip code, and census tract and date of birth will be generalized to age at time of application submission; and all other PII will become Anonymized Data, unless the Agencies are legally required to retain the PII for longer due to a pending criminal, civil or administrative investigation or proceeding.

For Applicants who have submitted more than one application, Agencies will retain the application, including the PII, during the active Listing period and for 90 days after the Listing closes. After ninety days, all applications that are not Applicants’ most recent application submitted will undergo the following process: name, phone number(s), and unit number will be deleted; street address will be generalized to census tract and date of birth will be generalized to age at time of application submission; and all other PII will become Anonymized Data. 

Once PII is generalized or converted to Anonymized Data, this information will be retained indefinitely for the purpose of conducting statistical analyses to identify trends in Local Governments’ efforts to comply with affirmatively further fair housing laws and to provide demand data to guide development of affordable housing programs and policies.  

For Duplicate Applications that were not considered for a Listing in accordance with the Terms of Use, the Agencies will retain the PII for a Duplicate Application as it would for an application, as set forth in the prior two paragraphs.

The Agencies may not accommodate a request to change information if they believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.

If you delete your User Contributions from the Website, copies of your User Contributions may remain viewable in cached and archived pages, or might have been copied or stored by other Website Users. Proper access and use of information provided on the Website, including User Contributions, is governed by the Terms of Use.

Text Messaging

If you provide us with your mobile phone number, you consent to receive Short Message Service (SMS) messages from Doorway regarding service updates, notifications, and other information related to our service. PII collected or shared via SMS may include your name, email address, phone number, mailing address, and/or other information you provide when requesting our service. We will use your information to respond to your inquiries and provide housing-related information or assistance. We use trusted service providers (such as RingCentral and Zendesk) to facilitate these communications on our behalf. For information on how they manage your information, please visit the links below: 

• https://www.ringcentral.com/legal/last-update-august-29-2025/privacy-notice.html
•  https://www.zendesk.com/company/agreements-and-terms/privacy-notice/ 

Mobile phone numbers and opt-in consent will not be shared with any third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. 

Standard messaging and data rates may apply. Messaging frequency may vary. To stop receiving text messages from Doorway, reply to any Doorway text message with the word “STOP.” For assistance, text HELP or visit our website at housingbayarea.mtc.ca.gov.

Submittal of a Paper Application

An Applicant may choose to submit a paper application for a Listing directly to the Agencies.  For applications that are received on or before the Listing’s deadline for receipt of applications, the Agencies will use the information in the application, including any PII, to create an online application to submit to the Professional Partner, as indicated in the paper application. The Agencies will retain the paper application for ninety days after the online application based on the paper application has been submitted to the Professional Partner. The online application, and the PII contained therein, which have been created from the paper application, will then be subject to the Privacy Policy, as if the Applicant originally submitted an online application.  

For paper applications that are received after a Listing’s deadline for receipt of applications, the Agencies will return the paper application to the Applicant at the Applicant’s address as listed on the paper application with a cover letter notifying the Applicant that their Application could not be processed.  The cover letter will be retained for ninety days after mailing.

Data Security

The Agencies’ cloud platform providers employ procedural, technological, and physical security measures that are reasonably designed to prevent unauthorized access.  This should not, however, be deemed in any way as warranting or guaranteeing the security of the information provided on the Website.

Please note that PII is not encrypted as it is entered into the Website by an Applicant.  However, PII is encrypted when it is sent to the relevant Professional Partner and/or Local Government.

The safety and security of your information also depends on you. Where the Agencies have given you (or where you have chosen) a password for access to certain parts of the Website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. The Agencies ask you not to share your password with anyone. 

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although the Agencies do the best they can to protect your PII, they cannot guarantee the security of your PII transmitted to the Website. There is a risk that unauthorized third parties may engage in illegal activity by such things as hacking into on-line web services.  Any transmission of PII is at your own risk. The Agencies are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Website.

Third-Party Websites and Applications

The Website may contain links to third-party websites operated by entities that may be affiliated with the Agencies. These web links may be referenced within content or placed beside the names or logos of the other entities. The Agencies do not disclose PII to these third-party websites.

WARNING: Once a visitor enters external websites (whether through a service or content link), the Agencies are not responsible for the privacy practices of those other websites. Please review all privacy policies of external websites you may visit from links on the Website before using or providing any information to such other websites.

Changes to The Privacy Policy

Material Changes: The Agencies will inform visitors if material changes are made to this Privacy Policy, in particular, changes that expand the permissible uses or disclosures of PII allowed by the prior version of the Privacy Policy. If the Agencies makes material changes to the Privacy Policy, BAHFA will notify visitors by means of posting a conspicuous notice on the Website that material changes have been made.

Immaterial Changes: BAHFA may also make non-substantive changes to the Privacy Policy, such as those that do not affect the permissible uses or disclosures of PII. In these instances, BAHFA may not post a special notice on the Website.

If BAHFA decides to make any change to the Privacy Policy, material or immaterial, BAHFA will post the revised policy online, along with the date of any amendment.

BAHFA reserves the right to modify this Privacy Policy at any time, so the Privacy Policy needs to be reviewed frequently by visitors.

When BAHFA revises the Privacy Policy, the "last updated" date at the top of the Privacy Policy will reflect the date of the last change. The Agencies encourage visitors to review this Privacy Policy periodically. 

Contact Information

BAHFA welcomes comments on this Privacy Policy. Also, if there are questions about this statement, please contact the MTC Privacy Officer at privacyofficer@bayareametro.gov or call 415-778-6700.

History of Changes to Privacy Policy

• June 29, 2023: Privacy Policy established.
• March 28, 2024: Privacy Policy amended to account for new features of Website.
• October 21, 2024: Privacy Policy amended to account for use of statistical analyses and Duplicate Applications.
• January 21, 2025: Privacy Policy amended to account for use of Box.
• May 14, 2026: Privacy Policy amended to revise process of retaining PII and to add a definition for Anonymized data.