Single-period location models for subsidized housing: Project-based subsidies

Large urban public housing authorities (PHAs) in the US have abandoned the traditional model of high-rise public housing developments and increasingly use lower-density project-based subsidized housing as well as tenant-based housing subsidies to provide affordable shelter. PHAs generally apply practitioner expertise to locate subsidized housing and do not identify housing alternatives using prescriptive planning models that optimize policy criteria and incorporate well-defined stakeholder impacts. Using policy characteristics and estimated economic impacts of subsidized housing, a new single-period multi-objective integer programming model for location of project-based subsidized housing is developed. Data requirements, relationships with standard planning models, solution characteristics and sensitivity analyses are examined. It is shown that this model gives planners considerable flexibility in choosing alternative housing configurations that can satisfy the needs of various interest groups.