Practical material for the people who actually run housing lotteries: waitlist drawings, unit and property lotteries, and the documentation that follows them. Everything here is free to read, with no signup, and is written from seven years of processing real lotteries for housing agencies. The downloadable files are free as well; they just require a free account. Use it whether or not you ever work with us.
Each resource notes when it was last reviewed. If something here is out of date or you need a resource that doesn't exist yet, tell us; this library grows in the direction practitioners point it.
Documenting a drawing
Housing Lottery Documentation Checklist The record a lottery should produce, organized as a working checklist: what to freeze before the drawing, what to capture during it, and what to archive after. Includes a printable one-page version and the eight questions any lottery record should be able to answer.
How to Document a Housing Lottery So It Survives a Challenge The full explanation behind the checklist: the six components of a defensible record, what federal rules actually require, and the question that exposes the gap in most agencies' files.
Why a Spreadsheet Isn't Evidence Where general-purpose tools stop being able to prove anything (written for forwarding to a colleague who isn't convinced this matters).
Templates and sample language
Housing Lottery Template Library Editable starting text for the documents nobody publishes: admission-policy language for random selection (tier and weight variants), a board memo on engaging a neutral third party, a privacy-safe results publication format, and applicant status letters. Each downloads as a Word file (free account required).
Understanding housing lotteries
How Housing Lotteries Actually Work The foundational explainer: what a housing lottery is, how weighting and preference tiers interact, and where randomness actually comes from.
How AuditDraw processes a lottery What a neutral third-party drawing looks like end to end, from spreadsheet to signed record.
Opening a waiting list
Waitlist Opening Toolkit The working documents: a phased timeline from board decision to notification, a fill-in-the-blank public notice template, and a notice distribution checklist with proof-of-placement tracking. Includes a printable timeline.
Opening a Closed Waiting List: A Practical Checklist The reasoning behind the toolkit: what the federal notice rules actually require, the decisions to make before the notice goes out, and the mistakes that cause the most trouble.
Preparing for an audit
Lottery Audit-Prep Checklist The pull-list for any review that touches a lottery: the six document requests reviewers make, and exactly what to have on file for each. Printable one-pager included.
What Auditors Actually Ask For After a Housing Lottery The reasoning behind the pull-list: what each ask means, what satisfies it, and where agencies come up short.
Reference
Glossary of Housing Lottery and Waitlist Terms Plain-language definitions of the field's vocabulary (from ACOP to weighting), plus an acronym decoder. Every entry is a stable link; cite freely.
Coming next
In progress, in roughly this order: a plain-language guide to the federal rules governing waitlists and selection, a practitioner FAQ, and state-by-state reference pages starting with the Mountain West.