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Do Foreclosures Cause Crime ? June 2011

The mortgage foreclosure crisis has generated increasing concerns about the effects of foreclosed properties on their surrounding neighborhoods, and on criminal activity in particular. There are a number of potential ways in which a foreclosed property might increase the payoffs to committing crime and decrease the likelihood of being caught. Reduced property maintenance by foreclosed owners may serve as a visual signal of increasing disorder and decreased monitoring by neighborhood residents. Residential turnover precipitated by foreclosure may further weaken the informal social networks that prevent crime. Vacant foreclosed properties may provide opportunities for more serious and lucrative crimes. Using point-specific, longitudinal crime, foreclosure, and other property data from New York City, this paper determines whether foreclosed properties affect criminal activity on the surrounding blockface – an individual street segment including properties on both sides of the street, looks separately at how foreclosures affect different types of crime, examines whether foreclosures that result in long-term bank owned status have larger impacts than foreclosures that are resolved by a sale to a new owner, and compares the marginal effect of additional foreclosures across neighborhoods with differing concentrations of criminal and foreclosure activity. We find that additional foreclosures on a blockface lead to additional violent crimes and public order crimes. These effects are largest when foreclosure activity is measured by the number of bank-owned properties on a blockface. We find that effects are largest in neighborhoods with lower levels of crime, and effects appear to be heightened when foreclosure activity is concentrated.