CSLS Speaker Series: “The Voucher Lottery: America’s Housing Crisis and the Politics of Scarcity”

Featuring Brian McCabe, Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor of Sociology, Research Director of the Center for Social Justice, Georgetown University

Abstract: Rental assistance through the Housing Choice Voucher program is scarce. Congress funds this program with annual appropriations, but each year, it fails to provide enough resources to meet the housing needs of every income-eligible household. As a result, local public housing agencies are responsible for divvying up scarce resources through randomized lotteries and lengthy waiting lists. In this talk, I ask how local housing agencies distribute these resources, and what it means for inequality among the poorest renters. Without the resources to serve every household, the routine tasks of selecting clients from the waiting list, certifying them for the program and sending them onto the rental market create successive opportunities for local housing agencies to govern the poor. Their actions reinforce categories of deservingness for rental assistance by prioritizing some types of households over others in the queue for assistance. Scarcity leads housing agencies to punish non-compliance with the norms of the private market and reify market participation as a prerequisite to decent, affordable housing. This talk interrogates the broader social consequences of a policy approach that denies rental assistance to the majority of income-eligible households, ultimately pointing to the core contradictions of federal housing policy during an extraordinary crisis of housing affordability.

PLACE       In-Person at 2240 Piedmont Ave in the Philip Selznick Seminar Room and Livestreamed via
                     Zoom. Light refreshments will be provided.

TIME          Reception: Lunch 12:15-12:45 p.m. in the Kadish Library 
                     Program: 12:45-2:00 p.m. in the Philip Selznick Seminar Room

INFO           csls.berkeley.edu

Register for the livestream via Zoom. Please note that registration is not necessary for in-person attendance. 

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If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) to fully participate in this event, please contact csls@law.berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.