Cookin’ the Books: How Waitlist Management Biases Data Production in Built for Zero Communities

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Built for Zero (BFZ) is a new data-driven approach to allocating housing assistance to homeless households. BFZ implementation includes the production/maintenance of a “by-name list” (BNL). The BNL is a regularly updated spreadsheet with personalised data about everyone who enters and exits a local homeless system (i.e., flow). Local administrators use the BNL to produce “by-name data” (BND). BND lets administrators monitor and manipulate system flow in “real time.” Scholars have not analysed how administrators manage their BNL and produce BND. This paper starts that conservation by answering three questions with interview data that was collected from administrators at 28 “BFZ communities” (i.e., homeless systems implementing BFZ): How do administrators manage their BNL? What factors influence BNL management? How does BNL management affect BND accuracy? Using thematic analysis, the author provides evidence that administrators manage the length of their BNL by removing “inactive” clients who have disengaged from service providers. Administrators try to verify housing status before deeming someone inactive. The verification process is shaped by social policies, network ties, virtual interactions, and administrative discretion. Because those things vary across homeless systems, administrators face different constraints and enablers whilst verifying someone’s housing status. The intersection of contextual factors and subjective processes biases the BND administrators produce from their BNL.