Public Housing Transformation and Crime: Are Relocatees More Likely To Be Offenders or Victims?

Our previous research about the effect of public housing transformation on crime patterns in the neighborhoods receiving households that moved with vouchers from public housing was based on modeling the relationships among the measurable factors in all neighborhoods. Our model indicated an increase in crime rates is associated with relocated voucher holders under certain conditions, but this finding does not give us any information about the nature of the effect. Critics of relocation are concerned that offenders are moving into the neighborhoods using vouchers, but voucher holders may also be more likely to be victims in their new neighborhoods. Developing sound policy on the basis of our research clearly requires a better understanding of why crime and relocation appear to be connected. This project conducted an intensive case study of crime in a few census tracts in a single year to find out if, in those neighborhoods, voucher holders relocated from public housing have a specific connection to arrests or incident reports and, if so, whether we can draw any conclusions about how relocatees affect crime. We found that, although definitively linking crime data to specific households is challenging and could not be accomplished with complete confidence, Chicago Housing Authority voucher relocatees in our selected tracts were more likely to be linked to both arrests and incidents of violent and property crimes than the population in general. That is, although the strength of the connection varied from tract to tract, people associated with relocated households were more likely to be both a victim and an alleged perpetrator than the general population. This effect was more pronounced for violent crime than property crime. We also found that older voucher holders were more likely to be victims of crime than the general population, whereas juveniles and young adults were more likely to be alleged perpetrators. These findings support the conclusions of our earlier study, further emphasize the need for greater services and supports for relocated households, and can help inform policy directed at breaking the association between these households and neighborhood crime rates.