Privacy Policy

Last updated: July 28, 2026

sfhousing.org is a housing board for San Francisco: apartments, sublets, and shared homes. This policy explains what we collect, why, and what you can ask us to do about it. It applies to www.sfhousing.org and app.sfhousing.org.

The short version: we do not sell or share your personal information, we run no advertising trackers, and we do not record your browsing. We ask for an email address so we can tell you when the board opens. We use Google Analytics to count visits — but only if you opt in. It is off unless you choose “Allow analytics,” and a Global Privacy Control signal keeps it off automatically.

The short version, in a table

Information we collect

Information you give us.

• Waitlist. Your email address, plus a tag for which page you signed up from (for example, homepage). Nothing else — we do not ask for your name, gender, household, orientation, or any other personal characteristic to join.
• Messages. If you email us, we have your email and whatever you wrote.
• Account information, if and when accounts open: a username, an email address, and an optional display name.

Information collected automatically.

• Request data. Our own server records the IP address and browser user-agent string that accompany a waitlist signup, and keeps standard web-server logs of requests. This is used for security, rate limiting, and spam prevention. It is not used to profile you or to target advertising.
• A spam trap. Our forms include a hidden field that real people never fill in. If it is filled in, we discard the submission. It collects nothing about you.

Passkeys. If you create an account, we support passkeys (WebAuthn). Your device keeps the private key; we only ever receive and store the corresponding public credential. We never see your fingerprint, face, device PIN, or a password.

What we do not collect or do

We want to be specific, because vague policies hide things:

• We do not use Meta/Facebook pixels, TikTok pixels, advertising SDKs, or any ad-targeting tracker. Our one analytics tool is Google Analytics, and it loads only after you opt in — see Analytics and cookies.
• We do not use session-replay or session-recording software. Nothing on this site records your mouse movements, scrolling, keystrokes, or screen.
• We do not load third-party fonts or embeds. Our typefaces are served from our own servers. Until and unless you opt into analytics, the site makes no third-party requests at all, so it does not announce your IP address to a font, CDN, or analytics provider.
• We do not use cookies for advertising, and we set no tracking cookies by default. A strictly necessary session cookie is set only after you log in to an account. If you opt into analytics, Google Analytics sets its own measurement cookies — you can decline, or clear them at any time.
• We do not buy personal information from data brokers, and we do not enrich or append data to your email address.
• We do not ask for or store the demographic characteristics of waitlist subscribers.

Analytics and cookies

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand basic, aggregate traffic — how many people visit, which pages they read, roughly where they are, and what device they use. We use it to improve the site, not to build a profile of you or to target advertising.

It is strictly opt-in. On your first visit a small banner asks whether we may count the visit. Google Analytics — and the Google script it depends on — loads only after you choose “Allow analytics.” If you decline, ignore the banner, or your browser sends a Global Privacy Control (or Do Not Track) signal, nothing loads and no analytics data is collected.

When analytics is on:

• Google Analytics loads a script from googletagmanager.com and sets its own cookies (for example, _ga) to distinguish visits.
• It receives standard page-view data and your IP address. We enable IP anonymization, and we do not link Google Analytics to Google Ads or use it for ad targeting.
• Data is processed by Google LLC and may be handled in the United States.
• It never receives the contents of your waitlist form or any message you send us — those go only to our own server.

Changing your mind. Your choice is stored in your browser. To withdraw consent, clear this site’s data (or your browser’s local storage) and decline the next time you’re asked, or turn on Global Privacy Control, which we always honor. You can also block analytics with a browser extension or a Google Analytics opt-out add-on.

California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA)

California’s Invasion of Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code §§ 630–638.51) restricts intercepting or eavesdropping on communications, recording confidential communications, and using pen register or trap-and-trace style tools without consent. Many websites run afoul of it by embedding third-party trackers, chat-widget interceptors, or session-replay scripts that route visitor communications to another company in real time.

We take the simplest possible approach to compliance: we do not do any of those things.

• No third party intercepts, receives, or observes the contents of your communications with this site. When you type into our waitlist form or email us, that data goes to our server and nowhere else — never to an analytics or advertising company.
• We do not deploy session replay, keystroke logging, mouse-movement capture, or any equivalent recording of your interaction with our pages.
• We do not embed third-party chat, support, or “co-browsing” widgets that would let an outside vendor read your conversation with us.
• We do not use pen register or trap-and-trace style trackers for advertising, and we run no ad-targeting pixels.
• We do not record telephone calls. If we ever need to, we will tell you at the start of the call and get your consent first, as California’s all-party consent rule requires.

About analytics and CIPA. The one tool that sends any data to a third party is Google Analytics, which measures page views (not the contents of your form or messages). We made a promise in an earlier version of this policy: that we would obtain your prior, opt-in consent before any such technology runs. We keep that promise. Google Analytics loads only after you click “Allow analytics,” never before, and never at all if you decline or send a Global Privacy Control signal. That opt-in-first design is exactly how we intend to stay on the right side of CIPA and the wiretapping case law built around it. If we ever add another tool that touches your data, it will be gated behind the same consent — we will not do it quietly.

How we use information

We use what we collect only to:

1. Operate and secure the site;
2. Email you when the board opens, or reply to a message you sent us;
3. Prevent spam, fraud, scraping, and abuse;
4. Understand aggregate demand (for example, how many people have joined the waitlist) — as counts, not as profiles.

We do not use your information to make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you.

Who we share information with

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We have not done so in the preceding twelve months, and we have no plans to. We do not disclose personal information to third parties for their own direct marketing purposes, so there is nothing to request under California’s “Shine the Light” law (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.83).

We rely on a small number of vendors that process data on our behalf, under contract, and only for the purposes we specify:

• Hosting and infrastructure, which necessarily processes traffic to the site.
• An operational alerting service, which delivers a push notification to the operator when someone joins the waitlist. That alert contains the email address that was submitted.
• Email delivery, when we send you the launch announcement or reply to you.
• Google Analytics (Google LLC), only if you opt into analytics. It receives page-view data and your (anonymized) IP to give us aggregate traffic statistics. Data may be processed in the United States. We do not link it to Google advertising. See Analytics and cookies.

These vendors are service providers, not customers of your data. They are not permitted to use your information for their own purposes.

We may also disclose information if we are legally required to — a valid subpoena, court order, or law — or where necessary to protect the safety of a person or to investigate abuse of the service. If we are legally permitted to notify you first, we will.

Data retention

We keep waitlist emails until the board launches and you have been notified, or until you ask us to remove yours — whichever comes first. Security and abuse-prevention logs are kept for a short operational period and then rotated out. Account data is kept while your account exists and is deleted when you close it.

Security

The site is served over HTTPS. Passwords are not used for accounts that rely on passkeys, which removes an entire class of credential theft. We rate-limit authentication endpoints, restrict where form submissions can originate, and keep personal data on infrastructure we control. No system is perfect, but we do not collect data we do not need, which is the most reliable protection there is.

Your California privacy rights

If you are a California resident, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the CPRA, gives you the right to:

• Know what personal information we have collected about you, where it came from, why we collected it, and who we disclosed it to.
• Access a copy of that information in a portable form.
• Delete the personal information we hold about you.
• Correct inaccurate personal information.
• Opt out of sale or sharing. We do not sell your personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. The only data that reaches a third party is opt-in Google Analytics, which never runs unless you allow it. We honor Global Privacy Control signals by treating them as a decision to keep analytics off.
• Limit the use of sensitive personal information. We do not collect sensitive personal information as the CPRA defines it.
• Be free from retaliation. We will never deny you service, charge you a different price, or give you a lesser experience for exercising a privacy right.

How to exercise a right: email [email protected] from the address you signed up with, or tell us which address to look up. We will confirm we received your request and respond within 45 days, extending once if we genuinely need more time and telling you if we do. You may use an authorized agent; we will ask for proof of their authority. Verifying you is usually as simple as replying from the email address in question — we deliberately do not ask you to send us more personal information to prove who you are.

If you are outside California, ask us anyway. We apply these rights to everyone.

Children

sfhousing.org is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. We do not sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16 — we do not sell or share anyone’s. If you believe a child has given us information, email us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

If we make a material change, we will update the date at the top and, when the change affects information we already hold, email waitlist subscribers to tell them. We will not apply a materially different use to previously collected information without your consent.

Contact

Questions, requests, or corrections — including anything in this policy you think is wrong — go to [email protected].

sfhousing.org is operated from San Francisco, California by Adam Koszek ([email protected], @wkoszek on X).