Since 2020, the Alameda County Housing Portal has allowed individuals and families to search for and apply for affordable housing opportunities within Alameda County. Developed by the Alameda County Housing and Community Development Department, the portal includes listings of available affordable housing units, eligibility checkers to determine if a household meets the requirements for specific properties, online application processes for applying to available units, and notifications for new listings and updates.

From its launch in 2020 through 2024, the portal has hosted 101 affordable housing property listings and has received 355,510 applications from affordable housing seekers, according to Dylan Sweeney, Policy and Programs Manager for Alameda County Housing and Community Development. In 2024, the website had 1.5 million visitors. Moreover, “the Alameda County Housing portal, as a single, consistently formatted source of information, has provided a lot of insight to policymakers and decision makers,” Sweeney says. “The bigger and more inclusive that ecosystem gets, the more valuable that insight will be.”

That ecosystem is expected to get larger after the Alameda County Housing Portal merges into Doorway, an affordable housing portal managed by the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority. Doorway, unlike the Alameda housing portal, includes listings from several Bay Area counties, and more are expected to participate in Doorway over time. This move, which is expected to be completed before summer, allows Alameda County to “amortize some of the costs of developing this expensive piece of infrastructure in a way that benefits all of our neighbors, and all of the people in need who can better access these resources,” Sweeney notes.

“Configuring these listings on a shared digital platform allows us to compile a data set of all of the restrictions on these units and how they may be impacting accessibility for certain groups,” he explains. “We may be building a lot more veterans units than we have veterans, or we might not be building enough senior units compared to senior demand. Housing portals provide a really good source of data for affordable housing demand. What types of units are interesting to what types of people? Where do they live? What are their income levels? What specific needs do they have? How does that match our portfolio? How might it inform the direction that we want to grow our portfolio if and when more funds become available?”

Outside of San Francisco, which operates its own housing portal, Alameda County “runs the most well-developed housing portal system,” Sweeney says. “We're proud of it. The transition will offer expanded features at lower cost to the Alameda County taxpayer. One of the great things about Alameda County opting in is that we actually have the most listings and traffic. Because we are the biggest player, transitioning into the regional portal means that Doorway is also transitioning into our ecosystem.”

Doorway officials say its benefits are many. Doorway operates as a single outlet for all available units, including new projects and re-rentals. The website “improves the equitable marketing of affordable housing units through broader accessibility, connects applicants directly to property owners/developers, reduces ineligible applications, manages the jurisdiction’s housing lottery preferences, provides important housing demand data, includes enhanced reporting for compliance with funder and other requirements, and reduces the need for in-house IT capacity.”

Many stakeholders will benefit from this transition, according to Sweeney. City and county officials as well as housing developers and nonprofits will have access to more local and regional data to inform planning decisions. Most importantly, people searching for affordable housing will have an improved portal for finding what they need.

For more information about the Alameda County Housing Portal, please visit www.housing.acgov.org.

For more information about Doorway, please visit www.housingbayarea.mtc.ca.gov.