Mixed-Income Housing: Factors for Success
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Low-Income Housing and Crime: The Influence of Housing Development and Neighborhood Characteristics
October 28, 2025
Research Article

Low-income housing development and crime

By Freedman, M., & Owens, E. G.

Full Citation

Freedman, M., & Owens, E. G. (2011). Low-income housing development and crime. Journal of Urban Economics, 70(2-3), 115-131.

Key Findings

This paper examines the effect of rental housing development subsidized by the federal government’s Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program on local crime. Under the LIHTC program, certain high-poverty census tracts receive Qualified Census Tract (QCT) status, which affects the size of the tax credits developers receive for building low-income housing. Changes in federal rules determining QCT status generate quasi-experimental variation in the location of LIHTC projects. Exploiting this variation, we find that low-income housing development in the poorest neighborhoods brings with it significant reductions in violent crime that are measurable at the county level. There are no detectable effects on property crime.

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