Blowing It Up and Knocking It Down: The Local and Citywide Effects of Demolishing High-Concentration Public Housing on Crime
43 Pages Posted: 12 Dec 2010 Last revised: 23 May 2015
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Blowing it Up and Knocking it Down: The Local and Citywide Effects of Demolishing High-Concentration Public Housing on Crime
Date Written: December 2, 2010
Abstract
Despite popular accounts that link public housing demolitions to spatial redistribution of crime and possible increases in crime, little systematic research has analyzed the neighborhood or citywide impact of demolitions on crime. In Chicago, which has conducted the largest public housing demolition program in the United States, I find that public housing demolitions are associated with a 10 percent to 20 percent reduction in murder, assault, and robbery in neighborhoods where the demolitions occurred. Furthermore, violent crime rates fell by about the same amount in neighborhoods that received the most displaced public-housing households relative to neighborhoods that received fewer displaced public-housing households, during the period when these developments were being demolished. This suggests violent crime was not simply displaced from the neighborhoods where demolitions occurred to neighborhoods that received the former public-housing residents. However, it is impossible to know what would have happened to violent crime in the receiving neighborhoods had the demolitions not occurred. Finally, using a panel of cities that demolished public housing, I find that the mean public-housing demolition is associated with a drop of about 3 percent in a city’s murder rate and about 2 percent in a city’s assault rate. I interpret these findings as evidence that while public-housing demolitions may push crime into other parts of a city, crime reductions in neighborhoods where public housing is demolished are larger than crime increases in other neighborhoods. A caveat is that while the citywide reduction in the assault rate appears to be permanent, the citywide reduction in the murder rate seems to last for only a few years.
Keywords: public housing, crime
JEL Classification: I38, R20
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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