Housing Projects and Crime: Testing a Proximity Hypothesis

Abstract

The belief that public housing projects are a breeding ground for crime has been responsible for much opposition to public housing in the United States. There is no evidence to support this belief. Our study of Cleveland's 4,000 residential city blocks shows 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 is one of the least important predictors of violent crime once the socioeconomic and housing characteristics of the adjacent blocks are taken into account. Furthermore, blocks in the vicinity of public housing, but not adjacent to it, do not have significantly higher incidence of violent or property crimes. Our study suggests that public housing projects should be smaller and less concentrated in the center of cities.