Housing Lotteries in the Housing Choice Voucher Program

The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program provides rental assistance to more than two million households in the United States.  However, unlike many other forms of federal assistance aimed at reducing social inequality and ending poverty, the voucher program is not an entitlement program. In fact, only one-quarter of income-eligible households receive assistance through the program. To choose among eligible families, local housing authorities maintain waitlists, screen applicants and select families based on local priorities. After distributing these vouchers, housing authorities monitor both voucher recipients and private landlords to ensure compliance with program rules. 

This project draws on in-depth interviews at public housing authorities (PHAs) at more than fifty housing authorities to understand how PHAs exercise their discretionary authority in the program.  Specifically, I look at on-the-ground rules and practices behind the voucher program, including how housing authorities craft waitlists, set local priorities and select voucher recipients from their lists. I investigate the way housing authorities explain program rules, set standards and outline the challenges of non-compliance for landlords and tenants in the program. In a recent paper published in Cityscape with Kathleen Moore, we show how PHAs utilize portability policies to increase utilization rates and, in doing so, create uncertainty within the ecosystem of housing authorities. In a new paper in the American Sociological Review, I show how administrative decisions made by PHAs create successive opportunities for state agencies to govern the poor. Drawing on interviews with agency officials, I describe a tripartite process of selecting market-ready households, engaging them in rituals of market formation, and utilizing market nudges to remind them of their responsibilities as market actors. This framework deepens sociological understandings of how local state agencies utilize discretionary choices in a resource-scarce, highly decentralized policy environment to evaluate, reform, and discipline the poor.

I am currently working on a book about the voucher program, housing lotteries and the right to housing in the United States.