OR Hits the Heights: Relocation Planning at the Orient Heights Housing Project

The redevelopment of the Orient Heights housing project in East Boston requires the determination of a feasible plan for temporarily and permanently relocating project tenants. Any such plan involves resource trade-offs pertaining to the number of new vacant units that must be created, the extent of temporary underhousing of occupants, and the degree of on-site versus off-site relocation. An integer programming model and scheduling heuristic developed for such problems was refined and applied to this problem. The results of the analysis identify strategic options for the Boston Housing Authority to pursue, in addition to detailed implementation schedules for each of these options.