Can't even afford to die.

Abstract

Public housing enforcement systems frequently present resident debt as a static financial obligation resulting from tenant noncompliance. This paper demonstrates that, in practice, public housing arrears function as a dynamic, self-reinforcing debt mechanism driven by repayment agreement defaults, payment reallocation rules, and balance re-aging procedures.

Through socio-technical analysis, this paper documents how residents who consistently pay rent and make substantial arrears payments can nonetheless experience balance regeneration, wherein near-zero arrears are reinstated to prior principal amounts following technical default triggers.

The result is not resolution but perpetual indebtedness, sustained through administrative design rather than financial necessity. This paper further argues that such mechanisms produce predictable human outcomes: exhaustion, financial depletion, health deterioration, and ultimately disposability, while maintaining institutional plausibility and legal defensibility.