Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) Programs

The Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) has a suite of programs to address the Bay Area’s chronic housing affordability challenges.

Credit
Noah Berger

BAHFA's pilot programs encourage coordination and regional thinking across the Bay Area's nine counties and 101 cities to tackle the housing crisis on a large scale.

The 3Ps Framework - Solutions to the Housing Crisis

The 3Ps framework of protection, preservation and production drives BAHFA’s strategy for creating systemic change to make sure housing is available for all Bay Area residents, no matter their income. Learn more about the Protection, Preservation and Production funding model.

BAHFA’s Pilot Programs

BAFHA’s programs are new and evolving. Several pilot programs already underway - see the details below.

Doorway

About the Doorway Pilot

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.

Doorway Staff Contact

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

Regional Affordable Housing Pipeline

About the Pipeline Pilot

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.

Pipeline Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Pipeline Staff Contact

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

Preservation: Welfare Tax Exemption Preservation Program & Housing Preservation Pilot

About the Preservation Pilots

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.

Welfare Tax Exemption Preservation Program

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

Housing Preservation Pilot

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.

Bay Area Preservation Pilot (BAPP)

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.

Preservation Pilots Staff Contact

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

Anti-Displacement & Homelessness Prevention

About the Anti-Displacement and Homelessness Prevention Pilots

About Tenant Protections

Tenant protections means rules, laws, actions or resources that help people stay safely and stably housed. These protections prevent exploitative behavior that would result in displacement (like unjust evictions). Strong tenant protections help prevent homelessness.

Anti-Displacement & Homelessness Prevention Pilots

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

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

Tenant Protections Frequently Asked Questions

What are Examples of Tenant Protections?

Rent control, legal assistance, emergency rental assistance and just cause eviction laws are some of the tools that can be used to help keep people in their homes.

How Will BAHFA Support Tenant Protections Long-Term?

BAHFA is working to prepare a comprehensive affordable housing finance measure for consideration by Bay Area voters in 2024. If voters approve this measure, BAHFA will advance tenant protections by:

  • Funding more affordable housing throughout the Bay Area, including housing that is affordable to extremely low-income households
  • Generating new funding for programs like pre-eviction and eviction legal services, counseling, renter education and emergency rental assistance

Will BAHFA Enact Tenant Protections Policies (Like Rent Control) for the Entire Bay Area?

No. BAHFA does not have the authority to enact tenant protections policies (like rent control or just cause evictions) on behalf of cities or counties. BAHFA can provide technical assistance and future funding for tenant protections to cities and counties.

Anti-Displacement Pilot Staff Contact

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