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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 9:32 pm
Time: 9:32 pm
Results for housing vouchers
5 results foundAuthor: Ellen, Ingrid Gould Title: Memphis Murder Mystery Revisited: Do Housing Voucher Households Cause Crime? Summary: In recent years, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has greatly increased the absolute and relative size of the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV or “voucher”) program. In 1980, the traditional public housing program was almost twice the size of the HCV program; by 2008, the voucher program was almost twice the size of public housing program. There were 2.2 million vouchers nationwide in 2008, compared to 1.2 million public housing units. Although the academic and policy communities have welcomed this shift, community opposition to vouchers can be fierce (Galster et al. 2003). Local groups often express concern that voucher recipients will both reduce property values and heighten crime. Hanna Rosin gave voice to the latter worries in her widely-read article, “American Murder Mystery,” published in the Atlantic Magazine in August 2008. Despite the publicity, however, there is virtually no research that systematically examines the link between the presence of voucher holders in a neighborhood and crime. Our paper aims to do just this, using longitudinal, neighborhood-level crime and voucher utilization data in 10 large U.S. cities. We use census tracts to represent neighborhoods. The heart of the paper is a set of regression models of census tract-level crime that test whether the presence of additional voucher holders leads to elevated rates of crime, controlling for census tract fixed effects—which capture unobserved, pre-existing differences between neighborhoods that house large numbers of voucher households and those that do not, trends in crime in the city or broader sub-city area in which the neighborhood is located, and in some models, time-varying census tract characteristics such as the extent of other subsidized housing and demographic characteristics. We also test for the possibility that causality is reversed and that voucher holders tend to settle in higher crime areas. In brief, we find no evidence that an increase in the number of voucher holders in a tract leads to more crime. We do find that crime in a year tends to be higher in census tracts with more voucher households that year, but that positive relationship disappears after we control for crime trends in the broader sub-city area. There is some evidence for the reverse causal story, however. That is, the number of voucher holders in a neighborhood tends to increase in tracts with rising crime, suggesting that voucher holders are more likely to move into neighborhoods where crime rates are increasing. Details: New York: New York University School of Law, Wagner School of Public Service and Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, 2011. 34p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 26, 2012 at: http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/Memphis_murder_mystery.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/Memphis_murder_mystery.pdf Shelf Number: 125783 Keywords: HousingHousing VouchersNeighborhoods and Crime |
Author: Lens, Michael C. Title: Neighborhood Crime Exposure Among Housing Choice Voucher Households Summary: Given a choice to move, do voucher holders successfully locate in neighborhoods with greater public safety? Housing Choice Vouchers provide tenants with opportunities to obtain affordable housing in higher quality neighborhoods, yet evidence suggests that they rarely take advantage of such opportunities by moving to lower-poverty neighborhoods. Using census tract-level crime and subsidized housing data for 91 large cities in 2000, the researchers compare the neighborhood crime rates of voucher holders to those of public housing, Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, and unassisted poor renter households. The researchers also examine longitudinal crime data from seven cities at the census tract level, allowing them to observe changes in crime exposure from 1998 to 2008. The results suggest that from 1998 to 2008 exposure of voucher holders to neighborhood crime improved considerably in seven sample cities. However, gains in safety are not attributed to voucher households moving to lower crime neighborhoods. Rather, the more significant cause is that the safety levels of the neighborhoods where voucher holders live improved more than those of other neighborhoods. The researchers find that voucher households occupied neighborhoods that were about as safe as the average poor renter household, and with much lower crime rates than those of assisted tenants of place-based programs (i.e., the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and public housing programs) in the same cities. Although voucher holders selected much safer neighborhoods than those of other subsidized households, they did not select lower poverty neighborhoods. This result suggests that voucher households simply may care more about safety levels than about poverty rates. At the very least, it suggests that neighborhood poverty rates do not perfectly capture underlying neighborhood conditions. Public safety outcomes of voucher holders are found to differ on the basis of race and ethnicity. Consistent with other studies, black voucher households lived in neighborhoods with higher crime rates than other voucher holders. Yet their neighborhoods were considerably safer than those of poor black households and black renters. This was not the case for white and Hispanic voucher holders, suggesting that the voucher program may be more successful in helping black households reach safer neighborhoods than it is in helping white and Hispanic households reach lower crime communities. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, 2011. 31p. Source: Internet Resource: Assisted Housing Research Cadre Report; Accessed July 26, 2012 at: http://www.huduser.org/publications/pdf/Lens_NeighborhoodCrime_AssistedHousingRCR08.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.huduser.org/publications/pdf/Lens_NeighborhoodCrime_AssistedHousingRCR08.pdf Shelf Number: 125784 Keywords: HousingHousing VouchersNeighborhoods and Crime |
Author: Ellen, Ingrid Gould Title: American Murder Mystery Revisited: Do Housing Voucher Households Cause Crime? Summary: Potential neighbors often express worries that Housing Choice Voucher holders heighten crime. Yet no research systematically examines the link between the presence of voucher holders in a neighborhood and crime. Our paper aims to do just this, using longitudinal, neighborhoodlevel crime and voucher utilization data in 10 large U.S. cities. We test whether the presence of additional voucher holders leads to elevated rates of crime, controlling for neighborhood fixed effects and either time-varying neighborhood characteristics or trends in the broader sub-city area in which the neighborhood is located. In brief, crime tends to be higher in census tracts with more voucher households, but that positive relationship disappears after we control for existing trends. We find far more evidence for the reverse causal story; voucher use in a neighborhood increases in tracts with rising crime, suggesting that voucher holders tend to move into neighborhoods where crime rates are increasing. Details: New York: New York University School of Law, Wagner School of Public Service and Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, 2011. 35p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 26, 2012 at: http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/American_Murder_Mystery_Revisited.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/American_Murder_Mystery_Revisited.pdf Shelf Number: 125782 Keywords: HousingHousing VouchersNeighborhoods and Crime |
Author: Van Zandt, Shannon Title: The Effect of Housing Choice Voucher Households on Neighborhood Crime: Longitudinal Evidence from Dallas Summary: Tenant-based housing assistance is designed to provide access for low-income households to a wider range of housing options, de-concentrating poverty and reducing the exposure of these households to negative conditions. Yet an observed coincidence of crime and subsidized households indicates that something is going wrong. Either households are constrained in their choices and are settling in high-crime neighborhoods, or these households bring crime with them, using vouchers to penetrate otherwise low-crime neighborhoods. We use longitudinal data from Dallas to assess whether changes in the number of HCV households are related to changes in crime, not just whether HCV households are present in high-crime neighborhoods. The evidence supports the hypothesis that observed relationships between crime and HCV households results from a lack of units that accept vouchers in areas that have lower levels of crime. The hypothesis that voucher holders are the cause of increases in neighborhood crime is not supported. Details: College Station, TX: College of Architexture, Texas A&M University, 2009. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Sustainable Housing Research Unit (SHRU) Working Paper 09-01; Accessed July 26, 2012 at: http://urbanplanningblog.com/papers/HCV%20Crime%202008.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://urbanplanningblog.com/papers/HCV%20Crime%202008.pdf Shelf Number: 125786 Keywords: HousingHousing VouchersNeighborhoods and Crime (Texas) |
Author: Carr, Jillian B. Title: Housing Vouchers, Income Shocks, and Crime: Evidence from a Lottery Summary: The Housing Choice Voucher Program (Section 8) is the largest federal housing assistance program; it provides in-kind transfers in the form of rent vouchers to low-income populations. This paper examines the effect of such voucher receipt on criminal activity. To overcome bias due to selection into the program, we exploit the exogenous variation in lottery-assigned wait-list positions in order to identify the causal effects of the vouchers. Using police department arrest records, we find that voucher receipt has no effect on the likelihood of all arrests and arrests for drug-related and financially-motivated crimes. Voucher receipt does increases the probability of arrest for violent crimes, and this increase is driven by recipients with criminal histories and males. Details: Unpublished paper, 2016. 43p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 17, 2016 at: https://sites.google.com/site/vijethakoppa/research Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://87902ce1-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/vijethakoppa/Carr_Koppa_March2016.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7crNTcGoElkMxZmJY_0CPKUIygntLnPGkTEbKLPJhmOZC1hE5ZwTU33TpvrBf1tE0K1GCIdVXZx2Q9_gxE8f_o_wsByiumwfiMDSxz1W35jO8mBqlH Shelf Number: 141145 Keywords: Housing VouchersNeighbourhoods and Crime |