Maloney Properties, Inc. (MPI) in conjunction with the Boston Office of Fair Housing and Equity, and the Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC) conducted a fair housing lottery on May 15, 2015 for the 95 affordable rental units at 66 Hudson, part of the One Greenway development.
More than 4,500 applications were submitted creating a potential two day paper drawing. MPI’s regional VP, Mark Kelly, tasked MPI’s Technology Team to find a better way to perform the lottery that was certified, transparent, and efficient. Being the first electronic lottery system by a private company for affordable housing in Boston, MPI’s Technology Team met the challenge by utilizing Random.org, a third party draw service first identified by IT Director Melissa Andrews. After extensively testing and tailoring the process, MPI’s IT Team finalized a simple, computerized lottery process which would be transparent to a viewing audience.
The entire lottery was about 1.5 hours with the actual selection of numbers taking 2 minutes, tops! All applicants in the audience were able to view the process on a large projector screen. They were able to see first and last names plus application codes go in and the randomized lottery placements come out. MPI’s Team was able to immediately print the lottery results and hand the first copy directly to JoAnn Cox, the Metrolist Coordinator in the Office of Fair Housing and Equity at the City of Boston.
