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City’s DALIA housing portal expands online applications, staff report 161,000 unique users
Summary
OCII and Mayor’s Office staff described DALIA (Dahlia) as a one-stop housing listing and application portal with online BMR applications, an electronic lottery and plans for multilingual and auto-fill features; staff reported about 161,000 unique users and over 25,000 online applications since launch.
City staff presented DALIA (also referred to by staff as "Dahlia"), an online consolidated housing listings and application portal, and outlined usability and rollout plans. Barry Ruder of the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development said the portal centralizes listings and adds an online application workflow: "Since we went online just over a year ago, we've had 161,000 unique people use the site, make close to half a million visits," Ruder said. He added the system has processed more than 25,000 online applications and enabled an electronic lottery to replace paper 'bin' lotteries.
Ruder described features now live and planned: BMR listings with online applications (pilot expanded to full rollout), electronic lottery results that post to the site, multilingual landing pages for the city's four official languages, an auto-fill/account option so returning applicants can prefill earlier information, and future notifications that match listings to applicant eligibility. He said staff conduct frequent user testing with actual applicants to shape the product and its policy implications.
Commissioners asked whether prior wait-list registrants needed to reapply; staff said DAHLIA treats new listings as new opportunities but that multi-family wait lists will be migrated into the system. Staff also confirmed applicants may still submit paper applications and that the portal will continue to support outreach to applicants with low digital literacy.
Staff encouraged applicants and interested parties to visit housing.sfgov.org to view listings and lottery results and noted that the system aims to make application and lottery results transparent and faster.
