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Urban Studies and Planning Commons

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Wayne State University

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Full-Text Articles in Urban Studies and Planning

Home Foreclosures And Neighborhood Crime Dynamics, Sonya Williams, George Galster, Nandita Verma Apr 2014

Home Foreclosures And Neighborhood Crime Dynamics, Sonya Williams, George Galster, Nandita Verma

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Research Publications

We advance scholarship related to home foreclosures and neighborhood crime by employing Granger causality tests and multilevel growth modeling with annual data from Chicago neighborhoods over the 1998-2009 period. We find that completed foreclosures temporally lead property crime and not vice versa. More completed foreclosures during a year both increase the level of property crime and slow its decline subsequently. This relationship is strongest in higher-income, predominantly renter-occupied neighborhoods, contrary to the conventional wisdom. We did not find unambiguous, uni-directional causation in the case of violent crime and when filed foreclosures were analyzed.


Public Housing Transformation And Crime: Making The Case For Responsible Relocation, Susan J. Popkin, Michael J. Rich, Leah Hendey, Chris Hayes, Joe Parilla, George C. Galster Jan 2012

Public Housing Transformation And Crime: Making The Case For Responsible Relocation, Susan J. Popkin, Michael J. Rich, Leah Hendey, Chris Hayes, Joe Parilla, George C. Galster

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Research Publications

The research in this article examines the effect on crime rates of public housing transformation in Atlanta and Chicago, focusing on the neighborhoods receiving households relocated with housing vouchers. Modeling the complex relationship between voucher holder locations and crime, using quarterly data, our analysis found that crime rates fell substantially in neighborhoods with public housing demolition, whereas destination neighborhoods experienced a much lesser effect than popular accounts imply. Nevertheless, on average, negative effects emerge for some neighborhoods with modest or high densities of relocated households compared with conditions in areas without relocated households. Overall, we estimate small net decreases citywide …