NCJ Number
81851
Journal
Social Problems Volume: 29 Issue: 2 Dated: (December 1981) Pages: 151-166
Date Published
1981
Length
16 pages
Annotation
Although the belief that public housing projects are a breeding ground for crime has been responsible for much opposition to public housing, there is no evidence to support this belief.
Abstract
A study of Cleveland's 4,000 residential city blocks examined the effects of housing projects on levels of crime in nonhousing project residential city blocks, after controlling for socio-demographic and housing characteristics. The numbers of property crimes and violent crimes occurring on each block were the dependent variables; three major independent variables were the number of public housing units on city blocks, the distances of blocks from particular public housing projects, and a weighted index of the distance of blocks from all public housing projects. Results showed that proximity to public housing projects for families has a small, but statistically significant effect on the incidence of violent crime. Yet adjacency to public housing was one of the least important predictors of violent crime once the socioeconomic and housing characteristics of the adjacent blocks were taken into account. Furthermore, blocks in the vicinity of public housing, but not adjacent to it, did not have significantly higher incidence of violent or property crimes. The study suggests that public housing projects should be smaller and less concentrated in center cities. Tabular data and 37 references are given.