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American murder mystery revisited: do housing voucher households cause crime?

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  • Ingrid Gould Ellen
  • Michael C. Lens
  • Katherine O'Regan

Abstract

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 article aims to do just this, using longitudinal, neighborhood-level crime, and voucher utilization data in 10 large US cities. We test whether the presence of additional voucher holders leads to elevated crime, controlling for neighborhood fixed effects, time-varying neighborhood characteristics, and 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 becomes insignificant after we control for unobserved differences across census tracts and falls further when we control for trends in the broader area. We find far more evidence for an alternative causal story; voucher use in a neighborhood tends to increase in tracts that have seen increases in crime, suggesting that voucher holders tend to move into neighborhoods where crime is elevated.

Suggested Citation

  • Ingrid Gould Ellen & Michael C. Lens & Katherine O'Regan, 2012. "American murder mystery revisited: do housing voucher households cause crime?," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 551-572, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:houspd:v:22:y:2012:i:4:p:551-572
    DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2012.697913
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Michael C. Lens, 2014. "The Impact of Housing Vouchers on Crime in US Cities and Suburbs," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(6), pages 1274-1289, May.
    2. Ports, Katie A. & Rostad, Whitney L. & Luo, Feijun & Putnam, Michelle & Zurick, Elizabeth, 2018. "The impact of the low-income housing tax credit on children's health and wellbeing in Georgia," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 390-396.
    3. Mark Livingston & George Galster & Ade Kearns & Jon Bannister, 2014. "Criminal Neighbourhoods: Does the Density of Prior Offenders in an Area Encourage others to Commit Crime?," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(10), pages 2469-2488, October.
    4. Olsen, Edgar O. & Zabel, Jeffrey E., 2015. "US Housing Policy," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 887-986, Elsevier.
    5. Wu, Yuzhe & Luo, Jiaojiao & Peng, Yi, 2020. "An optimization-based framework for housing subsidy policy in China: Theory and practice of housing vouchers," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    6. Carr, Jillian B. & Koppa, Vijetha, 2020. "Housing Vouchers, Income Shocks and Crime: Evidence from a Lottery," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 475-493.
    7. Ellen, Ingrid Gould, 2020. "What do we know about housing choice vouchers?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).

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