Editor’s Note: This article appears in Governing’s Fall 2024 magazine. You can subscribe here. The last time New York City’s Housing Authority opened up its waitlist for public housing assistance, more than 633,000 people submitted applications in less than a week. That’s roughly the entire population of Detroit, where 80,000 families are already on waitlists for public housing units or rental-assistance vouchers. In Miami, people who apply for vouchers can expect to wait at least eight years before they receive one. It’s more likely their names won’t ever be called at all.