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.