(a) (1) The Bay Area Housing Finance Authority is hereby established with jurisdiction extending throughout the San Francisco Bay area.
(2) The authority shall be governed by the same board that governs the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The authority shall be a separate legal entity from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
(b) The formation and jurisdictional boundaries of the authority are not subject to the Cortese-Knox-Hertzberg Local Government Reorganization Act of 2000 (Division 3 (commencing with Section 56000) of Title 5).
(c) The authority’s purpose is to raise, administer, and allocate funding and provide technical assistance at a regional level for tenant protection, affordable housing preservation, and new affordable housing production.
(d) The authority shall be staffed by the existing staff of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission or any successor agency, with the understanding that additional staff with expertise in affordable housing finance will be needed to administer the funding authorized in this chapter.
(e) It is the intent of the Legislature that the powers granted to the authority and the executive board under this title shall be transferred to a future regional agency if an agency, under one governing board, is established to replace the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments and integrate regional transportation and housing funding and policy decisions within the San Francisco Bay area, subsequent to a robust public engagement process at the regional level.