There’s a new law in my city that requires 20% of all new units to be affordable. They are building a 100 home neighborhood behind mine. Do you think that will bring crime?
Do low income units bring more crime?
r/AskLE
There’s a new law in my city that requires 20% of all new units to be affordable. They are building a 100 home neighborhood behind mine. Do you think that will bring crime?
Comments
Yes.
Read the book “inside the criminal mind”.
No. It will bring people in need of housing, housing.
Yes. 100%
Oh bud you’re fucked. I’m having this happen right now with 600+ low cost houses and apartment complexes. Only one apartment is done and there’s already been nightly police calls.
Where there are people, there will be criminal activity. The economic class of the people in a given area is a factor of what type of crime occurs there mostly. What’s important to factor in as well, is the degree to which an area is cracked down on by law enforcement. Statically lower income areas are met with increased police presence and in turn the police are met with more resistance. Feel free to draw your own inferences from that information.
Oh yeah, time to get out
Painting with a very broad brush, but yes, petty crimes tend to be more common in areas of lower socioeconomic standards.
It would be prudent to nip any criminal behavior in the bud before it’s allowed to fester and grow.
Public defender here. The answer is yes. 100% yes.
Edit: it will not be white collar crimes fyi.
Is the sky blue? Is water wet? Did Judas rat to Romans while Jesus slept?
Time to move dawg
Yes.
But, developers will probably find a way to wriggle out of that, or at least reduce the number of "affordable" units.
They announced similar shit in my old neighborhood a couple years ago. I noped the fuck out of there and moved to the neighboring county. Best decision I could have made. My old neighborhood which was always peaceful and low crime is now a ghetto with rampant drug and crime issues.
There will be Guns,Gangs,Shootings,Stabbing,Drugs and other type of crimes. 99% of violent crime occurs in low income/government housing. I live in Toronto where government housing is up the street from where I live and a Shooting occurred there last week. I have friends who live in government housing and work in housing security. Good people do live there but unfortunately it is where crime does occur.
The answer is yes.
The problem is that social scientists claim that the incidence of police responses is lower with low income housing than regular housing in places like suburbs and normal single family dwelling neighborhoods. What they don’t tell you is that that is an average based on population density. By their numbers, an increase of 300 residents with only 3 police calls a day is a very low average. HOWEVER, the way that we as police look at it, you have 3-6 police calls to one physical address or neighborhood every day, which is extremely high.
Years ago at my last agency they tried to pull this crap on the community, and I just spoke up and said "name me another residential address in the city where we respond more than once a day…I’ll wait." Their response was that different apartments count as different addresses, so it doesn’t count.
The problem above that is that even with single family homes or townhomes, if people don’t actually own the properties, the properties will rapidly degrade. People who don’t have a legal vested interest in their properties don’t care about them and trash them. This includes the yards. The streets will get littered with trash. Go into any low income neighborhood and there’s garbage all over. It’s so bad and so stereotypically pervasive that even Don Lemon himself has done a rant on CNN about it. This is going to drive neighbors crazy and police calls will go up dramatically simply for little things because the neighbors are going to be so annoyed a massive increase in livability issues. Things from garbage to kids running loose at all hours to noise complaints and driving complaints to reports of hearing gunfire.
You can make 6+ figures and still quality for “affordable housing” in my city so I’d argue it depends on who they are targeting. Low income or middle class? If low income then I’m sorry.
Leave that city.
Answer: Its going to depend. Inclusionary zoning is a thing where I work and the vast majority of people in those units are perfectly normal people, albeit some rough around the edges.
The problem is that two or three ‘bad’ units can lead to a lot of issues. ‘Bad’ could range from addicts letting anyone and everyone hang at their place to someone letting their baby daddy stay and they start hiding guns/drugs at their place. Poorer folks tend to have more kids and if their teens they may run in packs with their friends and break stuff, steal, etc because teenagers are assholes. Some units can get fraudulently rented and used as traps while the eviction process works through.
A lot of these issues can be mitigated with landlord laws that allow for faster evictions, voucher requirements that are enforced, a competent management team, access controls, aggressively policing shared parking lots, and partnerships with local PD to address issues early.
Unfortunately, YES. It’s appalling but bitter truth.
We had an actually very nice apartment complex go from private sales and rentals to government housing. It was in the "top earning" percentage of people who live in the city.
Within like 6 months, the amount of… complaints lets say to the city, had our smallest squad almost double numbers and usually had a two man unit dedicated to the area where that complex was.
That is actually something a good FTO teaches their newbies, is learn your areas where government housing is.
What do you even mean by low income? Is the rent going to be 1500 dollars a month for 20 houses or is it going to be specifically short term shelter housing? You haven’t provided anywhere the detail required to really say
Mixed income areas are great though. Brings in money, condos and houses at prices younger families can afford, the money helps supplements and pay for nicer units for the public housing ones so they have something they want to take care of. The people buying places start business that employ others in the community. Couple of the mixed income areas in my city have done incredibly well for drastically dropping crime rates in them
Unfortunately yes, where there are people of low socioeconomic status, there will be crime. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build affordable housing. I think what a lot of people here are misunderstanding is the difference between Section 8 government subsidized housing, IE projects, and rent stabilized housing, a set number of more affordable units in a higher end housing development aimed at young buyers, working class families etc. two very different animals. Seeing that the majority of this new development will be higher income housing, I think you’ll be fine.
What state and city is this in? I’m curious 🤔