OTH SF Subsidy Information
The Our Trans Home Rental Subsidy program provides financial rent support for TGI people in the San Francisco Bay Area based on income.
If you are at risk of losing your housing or need additional support to secure or maintain housing you may qualify for our rental support program.
The program also provides on-going housing navigation support to help support you on your pathway towards housing stability.
If you have questions or need help completing the application, please contact our subsidy team at rentalsubsidy@stjamesinfirmary.org.
We currently have two types of subsidies which prioritize Trans and Gender-Nonconforming (GNC) folks experiencing housing instability:
OTH SF Long-Term Subsidy
The OTH SF Long-Term Subsidy exists to help support Trans and GNC community members who have an annual income of less than $55,000 and have long-term disabilities, mental health struggles, and/or increased risk factors which make them extremely likely to need financial assistance in order to remain housed for the foreseeable future. These funds come from a long-term 5-year grant, which helps guarantee consistent assistance for our recipients and allows us to offer monthly funding for 18 months at a time.
This subsidy will pay some portion of your rent (depending on your income bracket and rent amount) every month directly to your landlord.
Once receiving this grant, recipients are required to submit income verification every 6 months and to reapply for the subsidy every 18 months. They must also notify us as soon as their income, housing, or contact information changes.
There are a total of around 90 spots available for the Long-Term Subsidy. Unfortunately, these spots are all full and there is a long waitlist to beging this subsidy. However, you are still encouraged to apply, because we may be able to provide some assistance through a short term subsidy!
If you are interested in applying for this subsidy, you can view the requirements and eligibility guidelines below.
Update on 7/25/2023: Unfortunately, the roll-out of the Short-Term Subsidy is on hold indefinitely. Due to limited staff and limited staff hours allowed by our primary funder, the city of San Francisco, and/or our parent org, St. James Infirmary, we do not have the capacity to distribute any additional funds to new applicants without sacrificing our dedication to our current participants. The staff at OTH SF offer our sincerest apologies for the limited amount of funds we have the capacity to distribute at this time. We are in the process of demanding more hours and more staff so that not a single cent of funds earmarked for the trans community will go to waste.
OTH SF Short-Term Subsidy
The OTH SF Short-Term Subsidy exists to help support any and all Trans and GNC community members who are currently housing insecure and have an annual income of less than $55,000. This subsidy functions very similarly to the long-term subsidy, but will only provide funds through June 2024. These funds come from a short-term grant that will expire at the end of June, so anyone on this subsidy will stop receiving funds at that time.
This subsidy will pay some portion of your rent (depending on your income bracket and rent amount) every month directly to your landlord.
Once receiving this grant, recipients are required to submit income verification every 6 months. They must also notify us as soon as their income, housing, or contact information changes.
There are currently a number of spots open on the Short-Term subsidy. Enrollment is currently open and rolling, but please note that if you are not already an OTH participant, it could take as long as 20-30 days to enroll you on the subsidy and send out the first check to your landlord. So, if you want/need payment by the first of the month, please make sure you apply and submit all of your documentation by no later than the 10th of the previous month.
Enrollment on the OTH Short-Term subsidy will remain open and rolling until there are few remaining open spots, at which time enrollment will shift to prioritize the most vulnerable of applicants (particularly BIPOC, sex worker, and trans-femme applicants as well as trans and GNC folks with disabilities).
The requirements and eligibility requirements for this subsidy are the same as for the OTH Long-Term subsidy. If you are interested in applying for this subsidy, you can view the requirements and eligibility guidelines below.
Requirements to Begin an OTH SF Subsidy
In order to begin an OTH subsidy, you will be required to complete the following steps:
Complete and Submit an OTH application. You can do that HERE!
Submit the following documentation by mailing it, emailing it, or using this page:
A. Valid Photo ID.
B. Income Verification indicating how much you have made in at least the past month.
C. Your current Lease.
D. Your Landlord's W-9.
Note: All four of the above documents (in addition to your application) are required for you application to be processed.
Once we have received and reviewed all of the above documentation, we will be in contact you to send you our OTH Subsidy Guidelines Agreement. You must then either follow the link we send to sign the Agreement in DocuSign, or you must print the agreement, sign it with wet (pen) ink, and then mail or email it back to us.
Documents that we will accept in order to fulfill the requirements for the program:
Photo ID:
We will accept any current government-issued photo identification (from any country or locality)
Income Verification:
We will accept any of the following documents, as long as they represent at least a month of your total income:
-Pay Stubs
-W2
-Bank Statements (you must include statements for all accounts you control)
-Unemployment Reward Letter
-SSI Award Letter
-SSDI Reward Letter
-CalWORKS Award Letter
-CAAP/CALM/CAPI Award Letter
-Financial Aid Award Letter
-If you cannot produce any of the above forms of income verification, you may submit a signed Income Self-Attestation Letter, which you can complete HERE
Lease:
We require a valid lease for the housing in which you currently reside. While not ideal, we may be able to accept a signed roommate agreement or sub-lease if you are a valid tenant, but are not on the lease.
Landlord's W-9:
We do require a W-9 from your landlord, because we send funds directly to them.
Note: We recognize that you might not have your Landlord's W-9 readily available, so you can go ahead an submit the other documents without it, but ultimately, no subsidy can be assigned to you until we have the Landlord's W-9.
OTH SF Subsidy Eligibility Guidelines
In order to determine the subsidy amount distributed to participants' landlords, OurTransHome SF uses and income and rent-based formula. This formula applies to all applicants and is designed to most efficiently distribute funds based on immediate need. As the OTH SF program is designed for individuals and there are other resources available to families with children, dependants are not taken into account. Please note that we use this formula to determine the subsidy amount for all of OTH's participants. Per our grantor's requirements, staff does not have discretion to depart from this formula to provide additional monthly funds to participants.
The PDF's below explain how the OTH SF's subsidy calculation works...


Subsidy Calculator
In order to estimate the total subsidy amount for which you would be eligible, you can access our new Subsidy Calculator. To see your predicted subsidy, simply enter your Rent and Income amounts in the light blue cells and the rest of the calculator will automatically populate.