New Affordable Housing Initiative Charges Random Amounts Between $0 and $10,000 Monthly
New York, NY
The NYC Housing Authority announced Friday a “Rent Randomization Program” eliminating fixed rental rates and replacing them with monthly amounts determined by dice rolls, ensuring no tenant ever knows their monthly housing cost until after they paycreating uncertainty that HHA officials describe as “maximizing fairness.”
The initiative, covered by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat, establishes a two-digit randomization system where tenants’ monthly rents range from $0 to $9,999, determined by official dice rolls each rental month.
“Fixed rents are inequitable,” explained NYCHA Director Patricia Whitmore. “Different tenants pay different amounts. Our system ensures mathematical randomness overrides fairness completely.”
On the first of each month, tenants report to NYCHA offices where housing authority officials roll two d100 dice (100-sided dice) generating a two-digit number. That number, multiplied by $100, becomes the tenant’s monthly rent: $0 to $9,900, randomly selected.
A tenant lucky enough to roll “00” (actually “100”) pays nothing that month. A tenant rolling “99” pays $9,900. Average expected rent: $5,000 monthly. Actual outcomes range from nothing to maximum, with no predictability or control.
Tenants unable to pay randomly-determined rent are evicted, regardless of whether prior months had minimal costs. The randomization system creates situations where residents paying $500/month suddenly owe $9,500, unable to sustain the jump.
A secondary initiative applies the same randomization to lease renewal. Tenants can renew housing at random intervals: every month (determined by dice roll where rolling “1” triggers immediate renewal consideration, “2-100” indicate waiting periods), creating lease instability matching rent unpredictability.
Housing policy experts note that random pricing eliminates any relationship between housing costs and tenant ability to pay. NYCHA officials celebrated this: “Fairness is impossible; randomness is democratic.”
Tenants can appeal randomized rents on grounds of “unusually unfair dice rolls,” but appeals themselves are randomly approved (using dice rolls), creating situations where appeals-by-dice determine housing fates.
The system has generated unexpected outcomes: some tenants living rent-free for consecutive months, while others face cumulative costs from previous months rolling high numbers. Total owed becomes unpredictable and often impossible to calculate.
NYCHA discovered that randomization simplified accounting: they no longer track individual rent amounts. They simply announce the aggregate collected each month ($X million) divided among all tenants, regardless of individual payments, creating complicated reconciliations where some tenants owe money while others receive refunds.
Housing data indicates that randomized rent has increased homelessness 87% (tenants unable to predict/afford random payments) while simultaneously eliminating debt collection problems (it’s unclear who owes what).
For housing satire, visit Babylon Bee, The Onion, and Clickhole.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/