HOPE VI Projects Help Dissolve Crime

• January 11th 2012

by Shilpi Paul

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Atlantic Cities recently analyzed a new study from the Urban Institute, which determined that crime around HOPE VI projects doesn’t just move, it disappears.

HOPE VI grants are HUD’s attempt to rectify the problems caused by the old public housing model, which created pockets of low income housing that lacked accessibility and were often breeding grounds for crime. The grants help developers turn public housing into more desirable mixed-income housing, giving lower income residents access to neighbors who could help them find work and hopefully a better chance to pull themselves out of poverty. The projects are more consciously integrated into the larger neighborhood, emphasizing higher-quality materials, green space and maintenance of private units.

Over the past decade, DC has become one of the largest beneficiaries of HOPE VI grants in the country, second only to Chicago. Projects exist in Anacostia, near the Navy Yard and in Marshall Heights, among other areas.

The Urban Institute study looked at crime in the areas surrounding three projects, two in DC — the Capper/Carollsburg housing project, which became Capitol Quarter, and Capitol Gateway — and one in Milwaukee.

From Atlantic Cities:

In both cities, the researchers watched crime fall – at the sites themselves and in the neighborhoods around them. The crime, in other words, didn’t just relocate. Much of it disappeared. This process took longer in Milwaukee, but the fact that it eventually happened there, too – when the population of residents largely remained the same – underscores the impact of changing the places themselves. Hope VI didn’t make these projects safer merely by breaking up the concentration of crime that had developed in them.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.production.logicbrush.com/articles/blog/will_dcs_hope_vi_projects_really_dissolve_crime/4901.