Neighbourhood Crime and Scattered-site Public Housing

In this paper, an assessment is made of the extent to which proximity to 38 dispersed public housing sites opening in Denver during 1992-95 affected post-development levels and trends in neighbourhood crime rates. A new econometric specification incorporating pre- and post-controls for selection bias as well as spatial autocorrelation was employed to test for statistical relationships between the development of dispersed public housing sites and subsequent increases in various types of crime. The findings suggest that proximity to dispersed public housing was not associated with any post-development increase in reported crime of any type.