JOURNAL: Foreclosures and Violent crime

Mortgage foreclosure rates for US single family homes are expected to range between 10-15% over the next three years -- with some neighborhoods well over 30% (for example: in the San Diego exurb Temecula 15% of homes are already either bank-owned or in some stage of foreclosure). The Chicago Fed has found that under normal circumstances, every increase in the foreclosure rate by 2.87%, there is a 6.68% increase in violent crime. Further, housing values fall by nearly 1% for each foreclosed home within 1/8 of a mile.

The Swiss Cheese Effect

As US cities, suburbs and neighborhoods begin to look like swiss cheese, there's little doubt that the US will experience a radical increase in the formation of gangs, militias, and other violent groups. A volatile mixture of wealth/expectation destruction, neighborhood decay (due to empty and abandoned properties), and a visceral sense of economic betrayal/abandonment will be the drivers. Connectivity (both local and global) will ensure that the damage spreads virally.

Comments

[Duncan Kinder]

The Atlantic Monthly has recently published two articles on point.

In March 2008,it ran an article, "The Next Slum?", which explores the topic, "The subprime crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Fundamental changes in American life may turn today’s McMansions into tomorrow’s tenements.":
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime

This month's issue includes, "American Murder Mystery," which asserts that the recent spread of crime in mid size cities has resulted from the Section 8 policy of relocating persons with housing assistance away from inner city projects to the suburbs.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/memphis-crime?ca=NqTJl5tHooxWMZidIYnSrqNvzcHr2DX4xtVBXDIjzZY%3D
According to the "The Next Slum?":

"The decline of places like Windy Ridge and Franklin Reserve is usually attributed to the subprime-mortgage crisis, with its wave of foreclosures. And the crisis has indeed catalyzed or intensified social problems in many communities. But the story of vacant suburban homes and declining suburban neighborhoods did not begin with the crisis, and will not end with it. A structural change is under way in the housing market—a major shift in the way many Americans want to live and work. It has shaped the current downturn, steering some of the worst problems away from the cities and toward the suburban fringes. And its effects will be felt more strongly, and more broadly, as the years pass. Its ultimate impact on the suburbs, and the cities, will be profound."

...

"For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay."

According to "American Murder Mystery":

" Memphis has always been associated with some amount of violence. But why has Elvis's hometown turned into America's new South Bronx? [Lieutenant Doug] Barnes thinks he knows one big part of the answer, as does the city's chief of police. A handful of local criminologists and social scientists think they can explain it, too. But it's a dismal answer, one that city leaders have made clear they don't want to hear. It's an answer that offers up racial stereotypes to fearful whites in a city trying to move beyond racial tensions. Ultimately, it reaches beyond crime and implicates one of the most ambitious antipoverty programs of recent decades.

Early every Thursday, Richard Janikowski drives to Memphis's Airways Station for the morning meeting of police precinct commanders....A criminologist with the University of Memphis, Janikowski has established an unusually close relationship with the city police department. From the police chief to the beat cop, everyone knows him as "Dr. J," or "GQ" if he's wearing his nice suit. When his researchers are looking for him, they can often find him outside the building, having a smoke with someone in uniform.

....About five years ago, Janikowski embarked on a more ambitious project. He'd built up enough trust with the police to get them to send him daily crime and arrest reports, including addresses and types of crime. He began mapping all violent and property crimes, block by block, across the city. "These cops on the streets were saying that crime patterns are changing," he said, so he wanted to look into it.

....When his map was complete, a clear if strangely shaped pattern emerged....Janikowski might not have managed to pinpoint the cause of this pattern if he hadn't been married to Phyllis Betts, a housing expert at the University of Memphis.

....About six months ago, they decided to put a hunch to the test. Janikowski merged his computer map of crime patterns with Betts's map of Section 8 rentals. Where Janikowski saw a bunny rabbit, Betts saw a sideways horseshoe ("He has a better imagination," she said). Otherwise, the match was near-perfect. On the merged map, dense violent-crime areas are shaded dark blue, and Section 8 addresses are represented by little red dots. All of the dark-blue areas are covered in little red dots, like bursts of gunfire. The rest of the city has almost no dots."

[Boltonian]

One of the final points of the article Duncan cites is that the Janikowski / Betts theory may go unnoticed because to acknowledge it seem like racism, as well as the expected opposition from developers since their hypothesis does not augur well for downtown revitalization efforts.

Unless the inevitable end result is a de facto policy where the displaced urban poor are trucked out to the rural and semi-rural areas - allowing the urban and suburban elites to go into downtown for a show and then back out to the suburbs in safety.

And, if that situation were to come about, with a resulting tension between the displaced urbanites and rural communities, I'd put my money on the hillbillies over the gangstas any day if it were to boil over.

P.S. I consider myself a hillbilly of sorts - college educated, truck-driving, hunts and fishes, and works at a tech company.

[James F. Elliott]

That's an interesting observation. I live in San Jose, Calif., which was until recently the "safest big city in America." San Jose has always had a large gang population (estimates put it at 55,000, the second largest in California). But at the same time as our housing market slumped, we're seeing an increase in violent crime.

[rick]

I think to justifiably avoid the racism charge, this should be framed as a poverty issue - who else lives in section 8 other than the poor? Then you could follow up with research into the race of each tenant of section 8 housing, and whether their particular address is a focal point of criminal activity. But, I wouldn't suggest pursuing it to that level. Just stop w/ the long known correlation of poverty and crime.

As to the McMansions, I've been saying for the past four years of in-fill activity here in Atlanta, that the McMansions were the future multi-family housing similar to what I found in the Virginia Highlands and Little Five Points neighborhoods when I arrived in the early 90s. So, I think the rich have provided our future low income housing for the police, teachers, firemen, etc., who well probably never get the wages they deserve.

[Bob Morris]

Both the hard Right and hard Left will view such disintegration as an organizing opportunity, because, as they see it, if things fall apart then people will finally understand What's Really Going On and flock to us.

This is fertile ground for both right wing militias and hard core Marxists.

(I think their thought process is skewed. The populace could indeed arise in righteous wrath but then shoot politicos rather than join them.)

On a gangsta vs. hillbilly brawl, yeah, the hillbillies would no doubt be much better marksmen.

PS. Sacramento real estate sales in May were 2/3's foreclosures.

[Freyr]

John Robb,

I've read your book and find your work to be the best analysis of security, globalization, and like issues.

The concept of the "Resilient Community" is by far the most realistic and revolutionary as far as making globalization "work."

The question that you haven't answered-hopefully the next book will cover this-is the question of:

WHO DO WE BUILD OUR RESILANT COMMUNITES WITH?

As I look around my demographically changing community, this question seems to come to mind more and more.

So how do you approach this? IOW, who is in? When we do experience a system "perturbation" or collapse, who do we drop the draw bridge for? Obviously a resilient community (RC) isn't going to act like an NGO when chaos is among us.

If my RC is squared away, I hope this doesn't mean that those who don't have a RC are going to come to mine and ask for a can of beans?

This, Mr. Robb, is the bottom line when it comes to your work. Do you plan on covering this in the next book. Have you written about this and can you give a link? And what can you say about this now?

Because a lot must go unanswered until we can figure this out?

[Tordon]

Domestic violence increases across the nation as we see the foreclosure rate grow . I think that the effects on family may take longer to fix than the financial institutions that are recieving bailout funds.

[Duncan Kinder]

Narcocorridos and other corridos are being posted on Youtube to broadcast news events:

"Since 2006, there has been a dramatic rebirth of the old-fashioned news corrido, thanks to the internet site YouTube. Corridos have often been described as a sort of musical newspaper, like the British and Anglo-American "broadside ballads," which used to be rushed out after any exciting event as a way of spreading the word about what had happened, and commemorating the heroes or villains. The golden age of the Mexican corridos, in may people's minds, was the Revolution (1910-1920), during which virtually every battle and general was commemorated in lyrical form.

This tradition has continued through the years. There is an amazing five-volume set by a Mexican scholar named Antonio Avitia, which traces Mexican history through corridos, and shows that the form has functioned as a sort of working class alternative to the histories written for the literate classes...."

http://www.elijahwald.com/cortube.html

http://snipurl.com/d0o4l