Foreclosure Crisis and Metropolitan Crime Rates
Foreclosure crisis and metropolitan crime rates
The housing foreclosure crisis has been blamed for widespread economic and social problems in the United States, including reduced property values, depressed consumer spending and a decline in government services. Some observers speculate that it has also led to more crime in hard-hit cities.
“Despite anecdotal evidence of and growing fear that the foreclosure crisis was accompanied by increasing crime rates in cities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis, we found no evidence that metropolitan areas with higher levels of housing-mortgage stress had higher rates of violent or property crime,” Jones and Pridemore write.Jones and Pridemore will present the findings Friday, Aug. 17, at the American Sociological Association annual meeting. The paper also was published this month in a special issue of the journal Social Science Quarterly dealing with foreclosure and crime.