We work in partnership with community-based organizations to build and preserve affordable homes.
Our Mission
Our mission is to invest in the preservation and expansion of quality affordable housing and community facilities. We accelerate the production and preservation of affordable housing for economically disadvantaged households, individuals, and communities by lending to, investing in, and directly acquiring real estate assets.
About Us
HAF is stemming the tide of displacement and homelessness across the San Francisco Bay Area by innovating smart approaches to put money to work quickly and efficiently.
Every day, thousands of Bay Area residents teeter on the brink of displacement and homelessness. Those experiencing homelessness face insurmountable barriers to finding permanent housing, and even middle-income households struggle to own or rent a market-rate home.
The Housing Accelerator Fund is proving that there are solutions that work to speed up the delivery of permanently affordable housing, so that everyone has a safe, secure place to call home.
Our Origins
In 2014, the late Mayor Ed Lee convened a Housing Working Group to identify ways to address the city’s affordable housing shortage. It was clear that more immediate, comprehensive financing options were critical to speed up the delivery of permanently affordable homes. The San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF ; the HAF) was born as a solution.
We launched with a goal to fund the preservation and construction of 1,500 units over five years, focusing on projects that wouldn’t be possible with our our fast flexible financing. Kickstarted by an initial investment from the City of San Francisco, we closed on our first round of capital in April 2017, and made our first loans the following month.
The Fund Today
The HAF continues to be driven by the belief that everyone deserves access to housing, and that achieving this goal requires bold solutions. We are an independent nonprofit that operates as a public-private partnership in spirit and practice. We maintain close working relationships with our public, private, philanthropic, and community partners to create capital-based solutions in pursuit of our shared goals.
“To address the continued rising costs of housing in San Francisco, we need more tools to both build more housing and preserve affordable housing we have. It’s critical that the private sector step up to help organizations like the Housing Accelerator Fund deliver on its important mission.”
– San Francisco Mayor London Breed
We are a one-stop-shop that streamlines financing so affordable housing providers can acquire land and buildings and deliver critical housing across the finish line. By leveraging capital from philanthropic and private sources in coordination with public funds, we make it possible for affordable housing providers to invest at the speed of the market. Our innovative financial tools, like our anti-displacement bridge loan product, have accelerated the delivery of permanently affordable homes throughout the city.
The Housing Accelerator Fund is well on track to meet our goal of financing 1,500 homes in our first five years. We closely monitor our impact to ensure that our lending is supporting the communities who need it most.
Since we started in 2017, our team has grown to 7 friendly affordable housing professionals, ready to tackle big challenges alongside our partners.