How to Navigate Affordable, Low-Income, and Senior Housing in San Francisco - with Manson Leong

Most people in San Francisco think “affordable housing” is for someone else.

But the reality is more complicated.

In this episode, I sit down with Manson Leong from Self-Help for the Elderly to break down how the system actually works and who it really serves.

We talk about:

•  the difference between low-income and affordable housing 
•  how federal and city programs work 
•  Self-Help’s role in senior housing 
•  and how difficult it can be for seniors, especially those who do not speak English, to navigate the system 

We also talk about what is available right now and why so many people still struggle to access it.

If this is something you or your family are trying to figure out, there is a place to start.

The Westside Housing Resource Fair is coming up next Saturday, April 18, from 10 AM to 2 PM at 1199 9th Avenue. It is free and open to the public, with housing counselors, legal help, and more.

Resources

Westside Housing Resource Fair
Saturday, April 18, 2026 · 10 AM – 2 PM
San Francisco County Fair Building (1199 9th Avenue)
Free, walk-ins welcome

Self-Help for the Elderly
selfhelpelderly.org

Manson Leong Contact:
Email: mansonl@selfhelpelderly.org
Phone: 415-677-7688

DAHLIA Housing Portal
housing.sfgov.org

MOHCD
sfmohcd.org

MEDA
medasf.org

HUD Income Limits (SF)
huduser.gov

About the Host

Jessica J. Ho is a San Francisco realtor with Sequoia Real Estate and host of The Sunset Connection. She focuses on housing, neighborhood community, and the people who make San Francisco what it is.

Email: jessica.jasmine.ho@gmail.com
 DRE #02251177

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Transcript

Why Affordable Housing Shocks People

Jessica J. Ho 0:03

Welcome back to the Sunset Connection. This episode is a little different. I sat down with Manson Yeung, a senior housing community organizer at Self Help for the Elderly, someone who works in housing every day. We talked for almost an hour. And somewhere in that conversation, it became clear that this isn't really just an episode about senior housing. It's about something much bigger. It's about a system that most people in San Francisco don't fully understand. And when people hear the words affordable housing or low income, they usually think of one of two things. Either it's housing for people in poverty or seniors trying to get into buildings with decades-long wait list. Both are true, but they're only part of the story. Because in San Francisco, the affordable housing system stretches much higher up the income ladder than most people realize. A single person making up to $108,000 a year can qualify for federal low-income housing. A family of four making $200,000 can qualify to buy a city-supported home, below market rate or BMR. And we're calling that affordable housing. If that sounds surprising, it should. It tells us something fundamental about the market. The cost of housing here is so high that even relatively high earners fall into programs designed to make housing, quote, affordable, end quote. But most people don't know any of this. Not because the information isn't out there, but because the system itself is layered and confusing. Federal programs, city programs, different income limits, lotteries, wait lists, acronyms. And if you live here, you already know housing is one of the most contentious issues in San Francisco. People argue about development, density, what should be built, what shouldn't be built. And those conversations can get intense. But this is a different layer of that same issue. Because underneath all of that, there are people who are trying to figure out what happens when staying in place stops working, when the stairs don't work anymore, when the upkeep gets too expensive, when there's no clear step. But Manson does this every day. He gets calls from people trying to figure out what they qualify for, where can they go, and how long it's going to take. And the answers are rarely simple. So, welcome, Manson.

Manson Leong 2:30

Thank you.

Inside Self-Help For The Elderly

Jessica J. Ho 2:31

So can you tell me a little bit more about self-help for the elderly and the work that they do?

Manson Leong 2:36

Our range of services are so many. Anything that you can think of about elderly, we do. Meal service, check. Home care, check, hospice, check. Teaching them how to use computer, check. For those that who cannot read their language, we will help them to read the language and help them apply all kinds of uh services, check. Housing, my area, check.

Jessica J. Ho 2:57

To understand how the system actually works in practice, it helps understand the people working inside it. Self-help for the elderly has been part of San Francisco for 60 years. It began as a small office in Chinatown under the leadership of Annie Chung, who came to San Francisco from Hong Kong in the 1970s. She has now been the CEO since 1981. Today, self-help has grown into a large nonprofit with hundreds of employees across San Francisco and the Bay Area. In neighborhoods like The Sunset, they serve thousands of seniors every month. And their work goes far beyond connecting people to housing. They build it. They own and operate properties like Lady Shaw, a 75-unit senior building in Chinatown. They run a memory care facility on Grove Street, and they manage multiple housing sites across the region. So when Manson talks about housing, he's not speaking in abstract terms. He's responding to people every day who are trying to answer a very basic question.

Manson Leong 3:55

So we are not stranger in the affordable housing arena. No. One thing I gotta make sure people understand, affordable housing is not low-income housing. It's two different things.

HUD Versus City Housing Rules

Jessica J. Ho 4:07

Okay, this is where things get confusing. At a high level, there are two systems. Low income housing is federal. It's run through HUD, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It's designed for households with the least income. There's no minimum to qualify, and if you are approved, you typically pay about 30% of your income towards rent. The government covers the rest. Affordable housing in San Francisco is city run. It's administered through MOHCD, the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development. Instead of subsidizing your rent, these programs set rents below market rate. But to qualify, your income has to fall within the specific range. Too low and you don't qualify, too high you also don't qualify. So the simplest way to think about it is federal programs help you pay rent, city programs lower the rent. Two systems, same terminology, completely different rules. And to make it even more complicated, they don't even use the same definition of income. And you're going to hear me use the term AMI a lot. It stands for area median income. It's a number every housing program uses to decide who qualifies. So let's put some numbers to this. For a family of four in San Francisco, extremely low income is about $58,000 or less. Very low income is about $96,700 or less. And low income for many federal programs goes up to about $154,700. That's not what both people picture when they think when they hear that term, but it reflects how expensive it is to live in San Francisco. When you actually run the numbers, it turns out a lot of people you know might actually qualify for affordable

Dahlia, Lotteries, And Real Listings

Jessica J. Ho 5:46

housing. So let's say you do qualify. What do you actually do? The city has one main entry point, Dahlia. It's also located online at housing.sfgov.org. You create an account, enter your income and household details, and it shows you available listings. Most of them are run through a lottery. Some are first come, first served. It sounds straightforward, but in practice it's not. A recent building had 142 units available and it had over 10,000 applicants. Another building had two units available and had over 2,400 applicants. And then there's another layer, preferences. Some applicants are prioritized, people displaced by past redevelopment, tenants who are evicted, neighborhood residents, people who live or work in San Francisco. In one example, preference groups filled almost all the units. So if you're applying without one of those preferences, you're competing for a very small number of remaining spots. The system exists, you might qualify, but the math is unfortunately not in your favor. But I want to be clear about what's actually possible. So let's look at what's available now, today, without a lottery. These are real listings pulled directly from Dahlia. 949 Post Street, senior housing. Rent is about $1,545 a month. You need roughly $37,000 a year income to qualify. For someone on Social Security or a fixed income, this is a real option. Hawkins on Treasure Island, rents range from about $2,300 to $2,800, and the income range is roughly $56,000 to $67,000. The George and Soma rents are from about $2,200 to $3,400, with income ranges up to $80,000 depending on the unit. Three buildings, three different income brackets, three different parts of the city, all available right now, no lottery. These aren't theoretical. They're live listings, and most people don't know that they exist.

Workarounds, Waitlists, And Senior Barriers

Jessica J. Ho 7:41

Here's the part that almost nobody talks about. While the big buildings get listed on Dahlia and attract thousands of applicants, there's another part of the system that operates a little differently. Smaller buildings, older buildings, often owned by nonprofits through programs like small sites designed to keep housing permanently affordable. Technically, these units are supposed to go through Dahlia, but in practice, the system moves too slowly. So to fill vacancies, nonprofits sometimes list these units like normal rentals on sites like Zillow with no label, no explanation, just a listing. For example, a building on Clayton Street in Nopa is about $2,500 a month in rent, and the income cap is around $168,000. It's listed publicly like any other apartment, and if you saw it, you would not know that it was part of an affordable housing system. But that listing got 130 views within the first 24 hours. But compare that to 10,000 and that's still a big difference. This isn't really a secret. It's a workaround, and yes, it's still competitive. Everything I've described so far applies broadly to working professionals, families, individuals across San Francisco. But for seniors, the system becomes even more difficult to navigate. Right now, if you go on Dahlia and filter for senior housing, there are only a handful of listings citywide. And that's because many senior buildings don't use Dahlia at all. They rely on internal wait lists managed by nonprofits, which means access isn't centralized. It's fragmented. And there's a very long wait list. So all of the units that are managed by Mo CD is actually managed by nonprofits. Exactly. Like self-help for the elderly, maybe it's Chinatown Community Development Center, maybe it's Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Center or CCDC or TNDC, right? And the so they're technically managed and owned by nonprofit partners, but when a unit becomes available, then it has to be rented through the city.

Manson Leong 9:37

Correct. So the correct statement is we own nonprofit own that property and manage the property. And anybody in the San Francisco work and live in San Francisco can apply, and it's a lottery system to get that. That's the San Francisco DAHLIA program. So the hub program have three different ways to offer it to the general public. Number one is the voucher program that you know of, which is a letter that, you know, if you get selected, you can take that ladder and go to the open market and run from anybody. The other one is building uh to a building, like the Mercy Housing in Sunnydale, that generally called The Project, which is all the housing is run by nonprofit like Mercy. Okay. But they are 100% owned by uh uh HUD money, and the HUD have to say who's going to live there.

Jessica J. Ho 10:27

So HUD owns the Mercy Housing project, and Mercy is just the operator. Exactly. Parag was here. Parag Gupta. Yes. And he works for Mercy Housing. He was talking about that project in the previous episode. And so that is actually different than your situation because he does his company doesn't own that building.

Manson Leong 10:46

Mercy Housing is in both segments of the market, just like Safel. They have a HUD building, they have uh MOH CD uh affordable housing. So it depends which building that we own, we have to abide by the law. For the property like the one that on Broadway and Mason, when we have an opening, we don't have to notify HUD. We will have our own waiting list. So the last time we have the waiting list is 28 years ago. Whenever people is no longer there, then we'll call one, two, three, four, and go down the line. Just to give you an idea, last time and we have 1,000 names, took us 30 years to digest them.

Jessica J. Ho 11:23

30 years to go through a thousand names.

Manson Leong 11:25

Right. Now we are to the point that we can open the waiting list again. So for the people that who listen here, uh we will open our waiting list, I think 65 and above in June.

Jessica J. Ho 11:36

So if you're trying to help your parents or your grandparents figure this out, you're not navigating one system, you're navigating multiple systems. Federal programs where rent adjusts to income, city programs where you have to qualify for a specific unit, and different wait lists depending on how housing is funded. And they all sound similar. And it's even more daunting when you can't speak English. When did self-help start working in housing?

Aging Demand And The Human Cost

Manson Leong 12:02

Let's say back in 70, when we uh did city housing in uh Mason and Broadway, we have two active projects that we're working on. One right now we're at pause because of funding issue, which is 1234 Great Highway, which is uh also senior housing with uh TNTC.

Jessica J. Ho 12:19

And it's in the Sunset District.

Manson Leong 12:21

Correct, it's on the uh the Motel 6 location in in uh right by the ocean. The other one is the 933 Command, which is a restaurant that we own the building right now. Again, we are waiting, we're seeking for funding uh source to develop that particular site.

Jessica J. Ho 12:38

Yeah, so the need is definitely there, right? Because there's a generation that's currently aging into that um senior age range. So how is that impacting the work that you're doing?

Manson Leong 12:53

America is officially entering the at the end of the baby boomer. Baby boomer ended 1964. So all of them are officially over the age of 62. So the next 30 years is the most critical time for the senior. And we're not building any kind of uh uh aging facility at our level fast enough for the senior. So it is a game of fighting for resource every day for all the seniors.

Jessica J. Ho 13:19

Yeah, it's a critical issue.

Manson Leong 13:20

Exactly.

Jessica J. Ho 13:21

When you say you help them, do you have to sit down with them to go through their finances or do you have to help them apply online? Like how do you uh support them in that journey?

Manson Leong 13:32

We have a whole team of people that do housing counseling. So when they are ready, I will ask them to come down and sit with one of our counselors and hold their hand to help them apply.

Jessica J. Ho 13:43

Was there a moment where this stopped feeling like a job and started feeling personal?

Manson Leong 13:47

Every day, because you deal with the real people. I have a lady come to me, which is uh her very hurtful. She told me, say, mention, I'm 85. I try to get a house in 30 years. I live in SRO, I have cancer. I will die in a couple years. I still don't have one. Will I get one before I die? And the answer to her is I do not know. I say, Papa, what do you do when you're young? I said, Oh, I wash dishes for the restaurant that I eat all the time. I never see her. I never know that she is the behind-the-scenes hero that who make my meal uh uh enjoyable. So she serves our community. Now she cannot live in the peace. Can you not get personal with people like this? Okay. So so people's life touch you, and that's why it touched all the employees in the self-help. When you get to know them, they will tell them the story, and a lot of them is sometimes sad, sometimes it's happy.

Jessica J. Ho 14:43

Yeah. So I asked Manson, what are you actually seeing happen to seniors in the sunset right now? And the answer is what you would expect, but don't want to hear. A lot of seniors are staying in homes they've been in for decades. Homes with stairs they can't climb, maintenance they can't keep up with, some move in with family, some leave the city entirely. And the ones who need the care most, they get placed wherever there's a bed available, not the sunset.

Manson Leong 15:10

So the need is definitely for all eight all the seniors, right? But for the kind that we serve, which is most Chinese, it's very critical they have to stay in San Francisco. Because if we can put them in fresh snow, if we put them in the baker field, they cannot survive. They have to have the cultural support. But in the Bay Area, because we have such an enriched cultural support in terms of medicine, food, uh, friendship, you know, all kinds of cultural support, our city really cannot leave the Bay Area. So we make it very important for us, self-help, to let the city know our group is very much need the help from the city to build our affordable housing so they can age in place. Most of those cities that we serve, at one point or another, they they must have iron their clothes, clean the toilet, serve the table. They do the most basic job to serve the city. Now, granted, they don't make a lot of money, but they they put in their dues. And I think that's time for the community as a whole to make sure that we can address their uh uh housing need.

Jessica J. Ho 16:16

And there's another layer to this that we didn't even get into, but something that I see every day. There are seniors in the sense that who actually own their homes. They bought decades ago, but that doesn't necessarily mean that things are easier. Many families are trying to figure out what happens to the home after they pass. How do they pass it down? How do you avoid probate court? How do you even start that process? Even for people who have housing, there's still a lot of uncertainty with seniors. There's a lot about the system that does not work well. Lottery odds are low, information is fragmented, wait lists are long, and the eligibility is often unclear. But there are people trying to make it more navigable.

Westside Housing Resource Fair Guide

Jessica J. Ho 16:58

And on April 18th, many of them will be in one place. The Westside Housing Resource Fair. So you have an event coming up. Yes. Uh the Westside Housing Resource Fair, and that's going to be on April 18th. Um, can you tell us what it is and what to expect?

Manson Leong 17:15

So this is the second time we did it. We did one in 2024. Last time we have it, we have 700 plus people come. So we will expect more people to come, so come early. We have about 20 CBO and about four or five government agencies will be there now. We try to make sure anybody coming will walk away something that they need. So give you, for example, who is tabling. Like Mission Neighborhood Center will offer rent payment for those who need. I mean, if you are behind on your rent, you need help to pay rent, you might have a chance, they might be able to help you to pay your back rent. Let's say you are a tenant and you're getting an eviction notice or you get harassed by the landlord, we have open door legal there to answer actual legal questions. They're a real lawyer. So let's say you want to buy a home. You know, you can buy a below market rate home, a condo in San Francisco range from 300,000 to 500,000. But you have to go to education. We have Asian, Inc. to provide the information on education. So for ADU, a licensed Architect will be there to answer your question about ADU question, permitting costs, uh, and the planning department from the city planner, they will have someone there because they have streamlined a lot of the permit process. The assessor office will be there. And if you don't know how to navigate it, you don't know where to get the information, they have someone there for you. The rent board is there. You know, uh the rent board will be answered any question from the not just the tenant, but from the landlord. So everybody can do the right thing. Self-Help will be there. We will showcase all of our 40 different services right there. And something is going to be right for you. Something that's going to help you to learn something, to achieve something. So that's our goal.

Jessica J. Ho 19:01

And if you have any questions, you can reach out directly to Manson. I'll put his contact information in the show notes. Anything in this episode felt relevant, whether it's for you, your parents, or someone in your life trying to figure out what comes next. The Westside Housing Resource Fair is on April 18th. You can walk in, ask questions, and start somewhere. I'm Jessica Ho, and this is the Sunset Connection. See you in the neighborhood.