How to find affordable housing in a few clicks

The affordable housing landscape would be much better for those in need if all the listings were in one place, Doorway Housing Portal Manager Barry Roeder said.

“It’s such a fragmented ecosystem that may have, OK, this jurisdiction talked about that developer, and they are putting in a couple units and they will just put a sign in front of the building but, if you don’t drive down that street, you won’t see it,” Roeder said.

However, the portal launched in 2022 and has only five listings throughout the county. The housing available on the website are Station Park Green and 2000 Delaware in San Mateo and Highwater in Redwood City. There are also two senior housing facilities in South San Francisco and Pacifica. Once a housing location is selected, users will see how many vacancies are available and may apply for a unit online. The leasing agents’ contact information and other important resources such as housing eligibility and income requirements are also listed.

The website provides information for eight other counties, including a regional map with pinned housing vacancies. The website was formatted on San Francisco’s DAHLIA housing portal and BAHFA received assistance from 20 Google fellows to create it, Roeder said.

Eventually, Doorway will have a larger list of housing options and provide additional resources for the community. By next year, the portal aims to be equipped with lottery and application access.

But Roeder said the need for affordable housing and a usable portal isn’t the only issue on which BAHFA is focused.

“We call it the three Ps: protection of current residents to avoid displacement, preservation of existing housing affordable to lower- and middle-income residents and production of new housing of all income levels but especially affordable,” Roeder said. “More and more of the population and more and more income bands need support.”

BAHFA is focused on policy changes and Roeder added two regional initiatives will be on the November 2024 ballot. The first would be a nine county initiative to raise between $10 billion and $20 billion for affordable housing. Roeder said 80% of the funding would go back to the cities and 20% would go to BAHFA for its own affordable housing developments. The other ballot initiative would be statewide to change the Constitution to allow affordable housing ballot initiatives to pass by 50% plus one or 55%, something lower than the current 66%, Roeder said.

Other resources

While Doorway is being used to condense all of the county’s affordable housing options into one space, it hasn’t yet and other cities and organizations have affordable housing resources.

The county has a housing portal for users to sign up with a login account by providing their information, household composition and preferences. It allows for users to sign up on a waitlist for four affordable housing developments: The Half Moon Bay Village, a senior living facility; the Moving to Work, Self Sufficiency Program; the Serenity Senior Housing in East Palo Alto; and St. Matthews in San Mateo, which offers single occupancy rooms, some with shared bathrooms. Cities such as San Mateo and South San Francisco link users to the county’s portal. Visit www.mysmchousing.com for more information on the county’s affordable housing options.

HIP Housing, a nonprofit housing organization, doesn’t have a portal but it blends the need for social services and housing opportunities through its three main programs. The self-sufficiency program offers housing opportunities and rental scholarships while parents are in school. The property management and development program is geared toward the nonprofit’s 11 deed-restricted multi-family housing developments. The home sharing program matches homeowners who are looking to provide housing and needed income with renters in need of a room. The entire program is vetted and facilitated by the nonprofit. Those interested in HIP’s services can create an account on its website on the Interest List button. Visit hiphousing.org/resources-faq/ for additional housing resources.

MidPen Housing, a nonprofit developer, lists its developments, some of which are posted on the county’s website. But it did list the Firehouse Square housing development on El Camino Real in Belmont. Visit midpen-housing.org/find-housing for more information and other units to rent outside the county.

Cities in the county also made efforts to provide affordable housing resources. Redwood City has three buildings listed, one of which is on Doorway, and the other two are Miramontes on El Camino Real and Main Street Apartments. Millbrae has a list of its three developments: Station 16, The Gateway and The Rollins at Gateway. It also has a list of outside resources. Half Moon Bay has a list of resources on its website with respective links. Foster City has nine different developments in the city that lists affordable units, however only one development, Marlin Cove, has vacancies and is accepting applications. San Carlos, Belmont and Burlingame all have individual interest lists that require an account. San Bruno lists of all the affordable housing units in the Bay Area, around 100 developments, which include their contact information and specifics about each unit.

Roeder said these individual lists are time-consuming and not user friendly, which is why Doorway hopes it will eventually be successful in localizing all of the information in one space by collaborating with the cities.

nick@smdailyjournal.com

(650) 344-5200 ext. 105