The impact of foreclosures on neighborhood disorder before and during the housing crisis: testing the spiral of decay (original) (raw)
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A Longitudinal Assessment of the Impact of Foreclosure on Neighborhood Crime
Objectives: To examine possible effects of housing foreclosure on neighbor- hood levels of crime and to assess temporal lags in the impact of foreclosure on neighborhood levels of crime. Methods: Longitudinal data from Glendale, Arizona, a city at the epicenter of the nation’s foreclosure problem. The authors rely on four data sources: (1) foreclosure data, (2) computer- aided dispatch (CAD)/police records management system (RMS) data, (3) U.S. census and census estimate data, and (4) land use data. Results: Foreclo- sure has a short-term impact, typically no more than 3 months, on total crime, property crime, and violent crime, and no more than 4 months for drug crime. Conclusions: Foreclosures do not have a long-term effect on crime in general, and have different, though modest effects on different types of crime. The relationship between foreclosure and crime is not linear in nature but rather is characterized by a temporal, short-term flux in crime.
Foreclosures and crime: A city-level analysis in Southern California of a dynamic process
Although a growing body of research has examined and found a positive relationship between neighborhood crime and home foreclosures, some research suggests this relationship may not hold in all cities. This study uses city-level data to assess the relationship between foreclosures and crime by estimating longitudinal models with lags for monthly foreclosure and crime data in 128 cities from 1996 to 2011 in Southern California. We test whether these effects are stronger in cities with a combination of high economic inequality and high economic segregation; and whether they are stronger in cities with high racial/ ethnic heterogeneity and high racial segregation. One month, and cumulative three month, six month, and 12-month lags of foreclosures are found to increase city level crime for all crimes except motor vehicle theft. The effect of foreclosures on these crime types is stronger in cities with simultaneously high levels of inequality but low levels of economic segregation. The effect of foreclosures on aggravated assault, robbery, and burglary is stronger in cities with simultaneously high levels of racial heterogeneity and low levels of racial segregation. On the other hand, foreclosures had a stronger effect on larceny and motor vehicle theft when they occurred in a city with simultaneously high levels of racial heterogeneity and high levels of racial segregation. There is evidence that the foreclo-sure crisis had large scale impacts on cities, leading to higher crime rates in cities hit harder by foreclosures. Nonetheless, the economic and racial characteristics of the city altered this effect.
Home Foreclosures and Community Crime: Causal or Spurious Association?
Social Science Quarterly, 2012
Objective. Aggregate crime rates continue to decline in the United States despite the depth and breadth of the current foreclosure crisis. This trend calls into question conventional wisdom and prior research that suggest a causal, positive relationship be- tween foreclosures and crime. The objective of this article is to consider an alternative argument, that foreclosures and crime are part-and-parcel of the same community- level dynamics, and thus are not causally related. Methods. We use random effects models to analyze community crime and foreclosure data from Chicago between 2004 and 2009. Results. Findings reveal that crime and foreclosures are spuriously related; controlling for confounding factors such as concentrated disadvantage and the politi- cal hierarchy of communities renders the foreclosure-crime association nonsignificant. Conclusion. Foreclosures and crime are each explained by antecedent community characteristics. To understand why social problems are unevenly distributed across geographic space, it is necessary to investigate why power and political influence are unevenly distributed.
Reevaluating Foreclosure Effects on Crime During the “Great Recession”
High rates of foreclosures during the "Great Recession" raised concerns about the potential harmful effects of the housing crisis not just on the economy, but also on levels of crime. Grounded primarily in theories of social disorganization and incivility, a growing body of empirical research has been directed at exploring whether the foreclosure crisis stimulated higher crime rates in America than would otherwise have been experienced. Many studies have now reported a significant association between rates of foreclosure and crime during the recession, but we are skeptical of whether this represents a causal effect because it is unclear whether the traditional regression approaches applied in most of the extent research account sufficiently for preexisting differences present in areas that experienced varying levels of foreclosure. We advance the literature on foreclosure and crime by employing a propensity score matching (PSM) technique to better account for such differences, evaluating whether U.S. counties that received larger "doses" of foreclosure during the recent recession experienced higher levels of property crime than comparable counties in which rates of foreclosure remained relatively low. Our analysis shows that, once prerecession differences between counties with high versus medium-to-low foreclosure rates are removed, there is no evidence of a significant association between rates of foreclosure and crime.
Home Foreclosures and Neighborhood Crime Dynamics
Housing Studies, 2014
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, unidirectional causation in the case of violent crime and when filed foreclosures were analyzed.
The contemporary foreclosure crisis and US crime rates
Social Science Research, 2012
Foreclosure rates in America reached unprecedented levels during the last half of the 2000s, and many observers have speculated that elevated crime rates were one of the probable negative collateral consequences of this trend. We examine this issue with a comprehensive county-level analysis of the role of foreclosure in shaping contemporary crime patterns, highlighting the possibility of theoretically informed non-linear and conditional relationships. Multivariate regression models that account for the well-documented spatial autocorrelation of crime rates and the possible endogeneity of foreclosure reveal a positive association between rates of foreclosure and property crime that accelerates significantly once foreclosure rates attain historically high levels. Multiplicative models indicate that this pattern holds for burglary across diverse county conditions, but the observed nonlinear effect of foreclosure on robbery rates is limited primarily to areas that also exhibit relatively high levels of resource deprivation and limited new housing construction.
Subprime Lending Foreclosures, Crime, and Neighborhood Disorganization: Beyond Internal Dynamics
American Journal of Criminal Justice
Research and theorizing about communities and crime has largely focused on internal neighborhood dynamics, to the neglect of factors external to the community that may be important processes in shaping community crime rates. We argue that subprime lending practices and the foreclosures that result may result in higher crime rates. We utilize data from the Summit County Lending Study, the Akron Police Department, and the 2000 U.S. Census to test the hypothesis that subprime lending foreclosures increase crime in urban neighborhoods. We find that subprime lending foreclosures have substantial impact on crime counts, net of controls. We conclude that additional research and theorizing about the role of external factors in the disorganization model is required.
The Impact of Single-family Mortgage Foreclosures on Neighborhood Crime
Housing Studies, 2006
Foreclosures of single-family mortgages have increased dramatically in many parts of the US in recent years. Much of this has been tied to the rise of higher-risk subprime mortgage lending. Debates concerning mortgage regulation, as well as around other residential finance policies and practices, hinge critically on the social as well as personal costs of loan default and foreclosure. This paper examines the impact of foreclosures of single-family mortgages on levels of violent and property crime at the neighborhood level. Using data on foreclosures, neighborhood characteristics, and crime, the study found that higher foreclosure levels do contribute to higher levels of violent crime. The results for property crime are not statistically significant. A standard deviation increase in the foreclosure rate (about 2.8 foreclosures for every 100 owner-occupied properties in one year) corresponds to an increase in neighborhood violent crime of approximately 6.7 per cent. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.
The relationship between crime and neighborhoods experiencing foreclosures and home vacancies is examined in this short paper.
In the wake of the U.S. housing crisis, a flurry of research has examined the consequences of foreclosure for crime, and much of the literature suggests that foreclosure impacts crime through vacancy. We suggest that foreclosure and vacancy have distinct crime processes and their effects should be examined in tandem. Furthermore, the spatial distribution of foreclosure and vacancy, particularly in surrounding neighborhoods, may have different consequences for crime. We examine these questions using quarterly neighborhood data from Cleveland, Ohio, from 2006 to 2011 for both property and violent crimes. We find that foreclosures only impact crime through the broader nearby area, whereas vacancies appear to only be of consequence within the focal neighborhood. Our findings suggest distinct and spatialized differences between foreclosures and vacancies in their consequences for crime.