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How to afford buying a house in San Francisco?

Every Year, Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD) organizes a lottery where they disabuse funds or assign priority to residents that applied to purchase or rent subsidized housing. MOHCD uses DHALIA as a digital way to make the application process faster. This is a guide on how to apply for Below Market Rate units or subsidized housing in San Francisco.

How does the lottery for housing work in San Francisco?

Most lotteries for San Francisco affordable housing programs are now run electronically. The lotteries are open to the public, although you don’t have to be at the lottery to be eligible.

1. Running the electronic lottery (all rentals and new sales)

All the lottery numbers are randomly sorted by running a program on random.org. Each applicant is assigned an "unfiltered" ranking between 1 and the total number of applicants. For example, in a lottery with 3,000 applicants, each applicant will be assigned a number between 1 and 3,000.

For physical lottery (resales)

A list of lottery ticket numbers will be displayed before the lottery begins. All the tickets will be placed into a bin and pulled at random in ranking order.

2. Filtering by preference

Preferences are only used for mixed-income below-market-rate listings

The lottery report is then filtered by lottery preference category. Having a lottery preference improves your chances in a housing lottery. They give current and former San Francisco residents a better chance of living in the City. Anyone who has a lottery preference is taken from the unfiltered list and sorted into a separate list.

Example: Julie has an "unfiltered" ranking of 11, and Bob has an "unfiltered" ranking of 15. They are both in the Displaced Tenant Housing Preference. Julie and Bob have the highest "unfiltered" rankings of all other applicants in that preference. So, Julie would have a ranking of 1 and Bob would have a ranking of 2 in the Displaced Tenant Housing Preference.

3. Posting

All lottery results are posted online to their listing no later than one week after the lottery.

4. After the lottery

The property manager or leasing agent will start contacting households in lottery rank order, sorted by preference. You must provide current or updated financial documents as soon as we ask for them. Otherwise, we may skip you and go to the next-ranked household in the lottery.

For renters, it may be months before you can move in. The timeline depends on the leasing agent and the state of the building.
For BMR homebuyers, there are additional requirements for closing the property. See the post-lottery process for BMR homebuyers
For DALP applicants, there are additional requirements after the lottery. See the post-lottery process for DALP applicants

Once you are ready to take on this process, go to the San Francisco housing portal DAHLIA to start your process.