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Lotteries Overview

Public House lotteries are designed to fairly and efficiently assign rank order to households. A lottery does not award housing directly—it determines who is invited to apply, and in what order.

🎯 Key Objectives

  • Reduce staff workload by only processing applications from top-ranked households
  • Limit burden on households who might not be matched immediately
  • Ensure transparent, auditable selection using randomized and weighted mechanisms
  • Enable time-limited selection windows to prevent ongoing, unmanageable lists

🔄 Standard vs. Weighted Lotteries

Standard Lotteries

  • Every eligible household receives one entry
  • All entries have an equal chance of being ranked first
  • Ideal when there are no program preferences or priority groups.

Weighted Lotteries

  • Households receive additional entries based on preference criteria (e.g., local residency, program tenure, household size).
  • Each entry is assigned a separate random rank.
  • The household’s best-ranked entry determines their lottery position.
  • If a preference is later found invalid during application review, the corresponding entry is removed and the next-best entry is used—a soft no approach that avoids disqualification.

🏢 Multi-Property Lottery Entry

  • Used when multiple units or opportunities are available at once.
  • A single lottery ranks all eligible participants for the program.
  • Staff can later filter or match ranked participants to specific units as they become available.
  • This prevents needing to re-run separate lotteries for each unit and supports efficient, unified outreach.