Social or public housing is an important component of the housing supply= n most European countries. Nowhere, however, has the notion of social hou= ng been taken as far as in the countries that formerly were ruled by soci= ist regimes, most notably the Soviet Union. For this reason, it may be ar= ed that the development of theorizations on housing has much to learn fro= this large but inconclusively studied example. One of the avowed virtues = socialism was that the system, in theory, guaranteed its subjects equal = ghts to housing. That this was not quite the case is well known in the li= rature, but in fact no robust evidence to support this view (or the contr= y) has been presented so far. Therefore, this paper's aim is to investiga= the functioning of the Soviet system of housing allocation, assessing it= claims to social equity and justice. Based on a detailed case study of ab= t 3500 Soviet-era housing allocation decisions made in Daugavpils, Latvia= at five poin! s in time covering various stages in the development of Soviet power (ful= coverage of decisions made in 1953, 1960, 1970, 1980, and January-April 1= 0), we illustrate how much living space was allocated to whom. In additio= we detail the characteristics of the waiting times involved. We apply bo= descriptive and regression methods on our data-set, making a significant= ontribution to what is known about the outcome of housing allocation unde= socialism and, at a more general level, under strictly supply-constrained= onditions.