Commentary: Crime as a Dimension of Neighborhood Quality

TL;DRAbstract

The overall theme of the very interesting and important articles in this symposium is rental housing assistance and crime, but the articles fall into two discreet topic areas: (1) crime as a dimension of the neighborhood quality of assisted housing and (2) the potential of assisted housing to help families or individuals with criminal background histories stabilize their lives. I will focus on the first topic and comment briefly on the second.Exposure to crime is one main reason housing policymakers should be concerned about the neighborhood quality of assisted residents. When asked about the reasons they prefer some locations to others, families most often talk about wanting a safe neighborhood for their children (Mills et al., 2006). The exposure of children to crime was also a catalyst for the redevelopment of distressed public housing.1The public perception that poor families moving into a neighborhood bring crime with them is an equally important reason for concern about the relat

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