The Heisenberg Funding Uncertainty Principle
Section 8, like any form of resident income subsidy, has both a people component (number of households served) and a money component (total cost in annual appropriations). Just as Werner Heisenberg’s quantum-mechanics Uncertainty Principle demonstrated that one could specify a particle’s location or its energy but not both, we can make a similar statement about housing program costs and benefits:
“As you can see from the voucher reimbursement formula …”
The Heisenberg Funding Uncertainty Principle
In designing a resident income subsidy (like Section 8), one can specify either:
Total households to be served
Or
Total dollars to be spent
But not both.
Specifying one necessarily means introducing uncertainty into the other.
In other words, are you more interested in capping the costs or mandating the benefits? You cannot absolutely do both, one must have primacy. This leads to the corollary question: which prevails?
Funding housing assistance: dollars or households?
Given the Heisenberg Funding Uncertainty Principle, those who create a housing assistance program have a fundamental design choice: is the program
· Dollar funded? A fixed annual appropriated sum, with a housing mandate.
· Units funded? A stipulated number of households subsidized, with a funding control.
Either approach necessarily requires establishing reserves, allowances for rent/ household contribution/ government payment, and adjustment provisions. As funding pressure mounts, any program design must therefore adjudicate the core question, who takes the risk of change?
· If dollar-funded, households gain or lose from swings in per-household costs.
· If units-funded, the government gains or loses from swings in per-household costs.
Abstractly, one can answer the question either way — but it must be answered decisively. Hybrids or compromise undermine both objectives without providing any corresponding benefit to either.
How one chooses to answer it reveals something profound about your political orientation.
Who takes the risk that Schrodinger’s cat is dead?
