Intrametropolitan planning for community-based residential care: a goals programming approach.

Small community-based residential facilities have increasingly supplanted large-scale institutions as treatment settings for mentally and physically disabled, indigent, elderly and ex-offender populations in the United States. Because the intrametropolitan assignment of these service-dependent populations and their community care facilities has not been purposively planned, most facilities and clients have clustered in inner cities, resulting in the formation of service-dependent population ghettos. This paper outlines a goals programming approach to the client/facility assignment problem. The model provides a basis for an intrametropolitan distribution of residential service facilities that balances equity and efficiency goals and that protects both client and community rights. A regional fair-share plan that incorporates negotiation and arbitration techniques is offered as an institutional mechanism for implementing the goals programming framework.