Optimizing housing and service locations to provide mobility to meet the mandated obligations for former offenders to improve community health and safety

Roughly 2,000 inmates return to communities each day in the U.S. Unsuccessful re-entry jeopardizes community safety, promotes re-incarceration, and increases costs to taxpayers to support the criminal justice apparatus. Research indicates that strong networks of support reduce recidivism, but most communities remain ill-equipped to successfully support former offenders. Community partner, Unlocking DOORS in Dallas, Texas, is a re-entry brokerage firm that coordinates services including housing, mental and physical health services, job retraining, transportation, and parole or probation obligations. This, like most re-entry service providers, assists former offenders navigating a patchwork of logistical hurdles including individual offender obligations, scarce offender resources, and critical (often mandated) mental health services. Transportation has been identified as a major barrier to successful re-entry and a barrier to all environmental justice (EJ) populations needing to access services. While many EJ populations face mobility challenges and constraints, this particular group faces some of the most significant barriers. The transportation network and transportations services provide the mobility necessary for this population to re-enter society. As a result, housing and/or services must be located with the transportation system in mind. This project develops a facility location problem for both housing and services that seeks to minimize the average travel time while using a maximum travel time as a constraint in the formulation. The mathematical formulation will work with the community partner to determine a reasonable set of constraints and typical travel needs of this population. Given the typical path to re-entry one can assume that most of this population will need to utilize public transportation services. This framework may be extended to other populations with less severe constraints to optimize the locations of housing and services for the disabled, homeless and public assisted housing projects.

• Record URL:
  https://nitc.trec.pdx.edu/research/project/1241

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $193149
• Contract Numbers:

  NITC 1241

  69A3551747112

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590

  University of Texas at Arlington

  Box 19308
  Arlington, TX  United States  76019-0308

  Unlocking Doors

  Dallas, TX  United States 
• Managing Organizations:

  TREC at Portland State University

  1900 SW Fourth Ave, Suite 175
  P.O. Box 751
  Portland, Oregon  United States  97201
• Project Managers:

  Hagedorn, Hau

• Performing Organizations:

  University of Texas at Arlington

  Box 19308
  Arlington, TX  United States  76019-0308
• Principal Investigators:

  Nordberg, Anne

  Mattingly, Stephen

  Davis, Jaya

• Start Date: 20180901
• Expected Completion Date: 20211130
• Actual Completion Date: 20220203
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Communities; Environmental justice; Housing; Location; Mobility; Offenders; Optimization; Public transit; Travel time
• Subject Areas: Passenger Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Society;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01674838
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Institute for Transportation and Communities
• Contract Numbers: NITC 1241, 69A3551747112
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Jul 5 2018 7:49PM