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Two Lanes, One Waitlist: Could a Section 8 Lottery Help? · Ryan's Journal

• 0:15
  Ryan ends his recording by asking whether the audience understands him.
• 0:20
  That's a bold question from a man who says "you know" the way other people use
• 0:26
  periods.
• 0:27
  But I'll give him this.
• 0:29
  Once you dig the idea out from under all the "um" and "you know,"
• 0:35
  it's a clear idea.
• 0:37
  So let's dig.
• 0:39
  Fifty fifty!
• 0:40
  Here's the plan, and it's a big plan, a very big plan.
• 0:45
  Half the spots go to people who meet the priority criteria.
• 0:49
  Homelessness, veterans, disability, income.
• 0:52
  Those people go first come, first served.
• 0:56
  The other half of the spots?
• 0:58
  A random drawing.
• 0:59
  Fifty fifty.
• 1:00
  Two lanes.
• 1:01
  Everybody gets a shot, and nobody gets left in the back of the line forever.
• 1:06
  That's what Ryan wants, and honestly, it's a winner.
• 1:10
  And that's a great pitch, because it's simple.
• 1:12
  Two lanes, one program.
• 1:14
  But I'll say what a good producer says.
• 1:16
  The first take of that pitch is a little rough.
• 1:19
  In the recording, Ryan starts by saying fifty percent lottery and fifty percent
• 1:23
  criteria, then he says the criteria half is first come, first served,
• 1:29
  then he circles back and says it again, and again.
• 1:32
  By the third pass I was ready to cut to a commercial.
• 1:36
  He does circle.
• 1:37
  But here's the clean version.
• 1:39
  Lane one is for people who meet a priority status, and inside that lane it's first
• 1:45
  come, first served.
• 1:47
  Lane two is a random drawing.
• 1:50
  And Ryan says that in lane one you still have to meet the criteria.
• 1:56
  Disability, veteran, that sort of thing.
• 1:59
  What gets me is the reason he gives.
• 2:02
  He talks about people waiting three years.
• 2:06
  People stuck clear in the back of the line.
• 2:08
  And I think that's the part that's real, you know?
• 2:12
  Three years is not a number on a page.
• 2:15
  That's a whole stretch of somebody's life.
• 2:17
  Kids change schools in three years.
• 2:19
  People lose jobs and find them again.
• 2:22
  And the answer they get is, keep waiting.
• 2:25
  And that's the logic.
• 2:26
  If the line is strictly first come, first served, then where you are in the line is
• 2:32
  decided the day you show up, and nothing you do afterward changes it.
• 2:37
  Ryan's saying a lottery lane gives somebody at the back a chance to jump to the
• 2:42
  front.
• 2:43
  A shot, instead of a wait.
• 2:46
  A shot!
• 2:47
  People love a shot.
• 2:48
  You've got to give people a shot.
• 2:51
  And let me tell you, the current system gives them a waiting room with a clipboard.
• 2:56
  Which is the funniest part of the whole thing.
• 2:58
  The government built a line so long that the fix everybody reaches for is a raffle.
• 3:04
  Step right up, folks, win the chance to wait in a different line!
• 3:08
  Operators are standing by!
• 3:09
  Okay, but that's the joke and it's also the point.
• 3:13
  A lottery in a system like this isn't a prize.
• 3:17
  It's a pressure valve.
• 3:19
  We'll get to why.
• 3:20
  First, Ryan asked a real question, and he deserves a real answer.
• 3:26
  Has anybody done this?
• 3:28
  Ryan asked whether a fifty fifty split has been done historically,
• 3:34
  or whether it's a brand new idea.
• 3:36
  Short answer from the research.
• 3:39
  Parts of it exist.
• 3:41
  A strict fifty fifty split is not a standard nationwide Section 8 policy,
• 3:48
  and we didn't find evidence that it is.
• 3:51
  That's not proof nobody has ever tried it somewhere.
• 3:54
  It just means we didn't find it.
• 3:57
  So the ingredients are old and the recipe is his.
• 4:00
  Let's walk through the ingredients, because it's the federal rulebook,
• 4:04
  24 CFR 982.207, and it's more flexible than you'd think.
• 4:10
  Housing authorities are allowed to set up local preferences,
• 4:13
  based on local housing needs.
• 4:15
  Residency, disability, domestic violence victims, single people who are elderly or
• 4:21
  homeless or displaced.
• 4:23
  A menu of options, and each authority writes its own order.
• 4:28
  And here's the big one.
• 4:29
  Subsection a, paragraph three.
• 4:32
  The authority may limit the number of applicants that can qualify for any
• 4:38
  preference.
• 4:39
  A cap!
• 4:39
  You can cap it!
• 4:41
  That means you could, in theory, say only so many spots go to this group,
• 4:47
  and the rest are open to everybody else.
• 4:50
  Very powerful.
• 4:52
  Very powerful rule.
• 4:53
  One of the housing guides in the research calls these limited preferences,
• 4:59
  and says they're often called set asides.
• 5:03
  The idea is to meet the needs of a specific group while balancing the supply for
• 5:08
  general applicants on the waiting list.
• 5:11
  So the concept of carving out a slice is in there.
• 5:15
  It's just a slice the authority picks, not a mandated half.
• 5:19
  So he's not crazy.
• 5:21
  He's, like, standing in the right neighborhood.
• 5:23
  He just picked a house number nobody's using.
• 5:25
  That's fair.
• 5:26
  And the other piece is subsection c.
• 5:29
  When a housing authority has applicants with the same preference status,
• 5:34
  it can pick among them by date and time of application, or by a drawing or other
• 5:41
  random choice technique.
• 5:43
  So first come, first served and a lottery are both explicitly allowed.
• 5:48
  They're just used as tiebreakers, not as two halves of a pie.
• 5:52
  And that's the real pattern.
• 5:54
  In practice, most authorities use the lottery at the front door.
• 5:57
  It's an intake gatekeeper.
• 5:59
  The list opens, thousands of people apply, and the authority draws a manageable
• 6:04
  number to actually put on the list.
• 6:06
  It's crowd control.
• 6:08
  Ryan wants to turn crowd control into a quota.
• 6:11
  He's taking the lottery and giving it a promotion.
• 6:14
  From doorman to co owner.
• 6:17
  I love it.
• 6:17
  And one more tool from that guide.
• 6:19
  Housing authorities can add names to the list in chronological order,
• 6:25
  or randomly, which is the lottery.
• 6:28
  Sometimes the lottery is limited to the first couple hundred applications received,
• 6:33
  or to those received by a certain date.
• 6:36
  So first come, first served and the lottery are already tangled together in
• 6:42
  places.
• 6:43
  Just not in Ryan's proportions.
• 6:46
  Let's get specific, because abstract policy is where everybody gets to feel smart.
• 6:52
  Ryan's in Ada County, and the Boise City and Ada County Housing Authority runs the
• 6:59
  Section 8 program there.
• 7:01
  They opened their waiting list in May and June of 2024.
• 7:07
  People submitted online pre applications, and then a computerized
• 7:13
  lottery selected 2,500 households for the list.
• 7:18
  And the ones who weren't picked?
• 7:20
  Discarded.
• 7:21
  According to the authority, if your confirmation number isn't posted,
• 7:26
  your pre application was not selected, it gets thrown out, and you reapply whenever
• 7:32
  the list opens again.
• 7:33
  And they say they don't know when that will be.
• 7:36
  The list is currently closed.
• 7:38
  Here's the twist for Ryan's idea.
• 7:40
  Even after the lottery, the order isn't random.
• 7:44
  Pre applications that are selected get placed in the order they were drawn,
• 7:48
  but households that meet local preferences may be moved to the top of the list and
• 7:53
  served first.
• 7:54
  And Boise's preferences are Idaho residents, elderly, disabled,
• 8:00
  families with minor children, and people exiting an Idaho transitional housing
• 8:05
  program for homeless persons.
• 8:07
  So you win the lottery, and then you find out there's another line inside the
• 8:12
  lottery!
• 8:12
  It's lines all the way down.
• 8:14
  Tremendous.
• 8:15
  Nobody's ever seen so many lines.
• 8:18
  Now this next part is our reading, not something Boise says.
• 8:23
  If preference holders keep getting served first, a lottery winner without a
• 8:29
  preference could sit behind them for a long time.
• 8:32
  And that's pretty much the bottleneck Ryan is complaining about.
• 8:36
  The authority expects to work through that 2024 list in about two to two and a half
• 8:42
  years.
• 8:43
  So Ryan's three years is not an exaggeration.
• 8:46
  It's the neighborhood.
• 8:48
  And Boise isn't alone.
• 8:50
  New Jersey's statewide list opened January 17 through February 3 of
• 8:56
  2023.
• 8:57
  They picked 20,000 households by random lottery, after sorting preferences.
• 9:03
  Veterans and their surviving spouses have the highest priority.
• 9:07
  Then homeless, disabled, domestic violence, and local residents.
• 9:11
  And their notice says plainly that submitting an application does not guarantee a
• 9:16
  place on the list.
• 9:17
  San Francisco did a version too, didn't they?
• 9:19
  The one with the huge number.
• 9:21
  They did.
• 9:22
  Applications ran May 7 to May 21, 2025, and the authority drew
• 9:28
  24,000 names from the submissions, split across different waitlists and bedroom
• 9:35
  sizes.
• 9:36
  Same line again.
• 9:37
  Applying doesn't guarantee a spot.
• 9:41
  And the preferences work as a point system, so a veteran gets an extra point and
• 9:46
  people displaced from San Francisco get points too.
• 9:50
  Points!
• 9:51
  They have points!
• 9:52
  Everybody's scoring.
• 9:53
  And one more, because it's the closest cousin to Ryan's two lanes.
• 9:58
  The Portage Metropolitan Housing Authority in Ohio puts people with certain
• 10:04
  preferences at the top of the list, and everyone else is ranked by date of
• 10:09
  application.
• 10:10
  So there you have a priority lane and a first come, first served lane.
• 10:15
  What's missing is the random drawing lane, and the half and half.
• 10:20
  Ryan, if you're listening, here's where your proposal needs another round of work.
• 10:26
  And I mean that with respect.
• 10:28
  The first question is what exactly the fifty fifty applies to.
• 10:33
  In your recording you talk about getting into a subsidized apartment.
• 10:38
  The written analysis talks about getting on the waiting list.
• 10:42
  Those are two different things.
• 10:44
  Right, because getting picked for a list isn't getting a home.
• 10:48
  I think that's the part people feel in their stomach.
• 10:51
  You get the letter, you think, okay, this is it.
• 10:55
  And it's not it.
• 10:56
  It's the beginning of another wait.
• 10:58
  And the program says so itself.
• 11:01
  A selection from the lottery does not guarantee eligibility or an offer of a
• 11:05
  voucher.
• 11:06
  Housing authorities still verify everything when your name comes up.
• 11:10
  Income, residency, and in places like San Francisco, a criminal background check.
• 11:16
  Even people who meet the basic criteria can be denied through screening.
• 11:21
  Second thing.
• 11:22
  Ryan lists income as one of the priority criteria.
• 11:27
  But income and priority are not the same animal.
• 11:31
  Income limits are a basic requirement for the program.
• 11:35
  Everyone has to be under them.
• 11:37
  Disability, homelessness, veteran status, those can count as preferences
• 11:44
  depending on the authority's rules.
• 11:47
  Just meeting the income limit doesn't put you in a priority lane.
• 11:52
  And there's the rule on top of the rules.
• 11:54
  Federal income targeting says at least seventy five percent of vouchers go to
• 12:00
  households at or below thirty percent of area median income.
• 12:07
  Seventy five percent!
• 12:09
  Boise says it right on their page.
• 12:12
  That's a big number, and it applies no matter how you pick people.
• 12:16
  So a pure random lane has to live with that.
• 12:20
  Third, and I say this as a man who has watched a lot of promotions fail.
• 12:25
  First come, first served sounds fair until you ask who can show up first.
• 12:31
  Lists open for short windows.
• 12:33
  Two weeks in San Francisco, a bit over two weeks in New Jersey.
• 12:37
  Within a window like that, what does first even mean?
• 12:40
  That's my interpretation, but it's worth asking.
• 12:43
  The housing guide also notes that a one day application method can mean long lines,
• 12:48
  which is hard on people with disabilities.
• 12:51
  And the fair way to settle this isn't by feel.
• 12:54
  It's by data.
• 12:55
  How many applicants fall into each category?
• 12:59
  How quickly does each group actually get housed?
• 13:02
  And does the split comply with federal requirements?
• 13:06
  Without that, fifty fifty is a nice round number looking for a reason.
• 13:11
  But I don't want that to be the last word.
• 13:13
  Because the instinct is good.
• 13:15
  Somebody in the back of the line deserves some hope, some real chance.
• 13:19
  That's a human thing to want, and Ryan said it plainly.
• 13:22
  So here's the answer to Ryan, loud and clear.
• 13:26
  Do we understand you?
• 13:28
  Yes.
• 13:28
  Two lanes.
• 13:29
  Fifty percent priority, first come, first served.
• 13:33
  Fifty percent random drawing.
• 13:35
  Is it historical?
• 13:37
  The pieces are, but the exact fifty fifty is not something we found as standard
• 13:42
  policy.
• 13:43
  It's a new combination.
• 13:45
  And a new combination is how new things happen.
• 13:50
  And the next step is a local one.
• 13:52
  Look at how the Boise area authorities actually treat their lists,
• 13:57
  and run Ryan's numbers against them.
• 14:00
  Until then, it's a good question wearing a very round number.
• 14:05
  That's the pitch.
• 14:06
  Fifty fifty.
• 14:07
  Does it work?
• 14:08
  We don't know yet.
• 14:09
  But it's a better question than most infomercials ask.