Can’t find affordable housing in the Bay Area? This new tool can help

For many people struggling to make ends meet in the Bay Area, how to go about finding affordable housing is anything but clear.

Some may get a tip from a social worker or stumble upon a for-rent sign on the side of an apartment building. Others are left scouring online for openings scattered across city websites and listing platforms.

“It’s just luck that you find out about it,” said Barry Roeder, a project manager with the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority, a regional housing agency. “That’s not exactly equitable.”

And even if a renter can track down an affordable unit, they’re often stuck navigating a complicated application process and making sense of a jumble of bureaucratic jargon to figure out if they’re eligible.

That’s all keeping an untold number of people from the chance to move into already competitive low- and middle-income housing as the need only gets more dire. More than 207,800 low-income renter households in the Bay Area lack an affordable home, according to the nonprofit California Housing Partnership.

After Terah Lawyer-Harper was released from prison in 2017, she spent hours cycling through a half-dozen housing sites in hopes of finding an affordable home in Alameda County. Discouraged by the web of applications, waiting lists and rental lotteries, she expanded her search and eventually found a deal on a market-rate apartment in San Leandro.

“I looked at pretty much every apartment complex in the Bay Area,” said Lawyer-Harper, 39, who now heads a nonprofit that supports formerly incarcerated people.

To make the hunt for affordable housing easier on renters, the Bay Area Finance Authority this week launched an online portal with affordable listings across the nine-county Bay Area — the first region-wide tool of its kind. It’s meant as a one-stop shop for renters to find and apply for affordable housing.

It works like this: The portal asks renters to select their monthly income, how many bedrooms they’re seeking and the county in which they’re looking for a new home. The site, resembling online listing services like Zillow, then brings up a selection of openings matching renters’ specifications and helps them through the online application process. Eventually, the agency hopes to introduce a universal application renters can quickly fill out and use to apply to multiple different apartments.

Employees with Google helped create the portal as part of a philanthropic program launched by the company. The Google team spent dozens of hours interviewing renters to understand their challenges in finding affordable housing.

“This is a convoluted process,” said Gabe Doss, who oversees the program for Google. “Folks that are seeking housing, they’ve told us verbatim that it’s stressful.”

Based on what they learned, the team prioritized keeping the portal as simple as possible while ensuring it explained eligibility and application requirements in plain language.

Just what makes affordable housing “affordable” anyway?

Generally, a home is considered affordable if a renter or buyer spends no more than 30% of their income on their rent or mortgage. Developers and owners of affordable housing typically receive public subsidies and other incentives to keep costs low.

People can apply to different affordable housing projects based on their income level and the size of their households. The income requirements vary by county. In Santa Clara County, for example, a family of four can make as much as $217,550 a year and be eligible for certain affordable homes. In Alameda County, the same family can make up to $177,500 annually.

Even if the portal succeeds in helping renters apply for housing, the grim reality is that many won’t get into an affordable home anytime soon, thanks to the severe shortage of low- and middle-income housing across the Bay Area.