conclusions : : : looking at crime changes by individual house

As the graphs indicate, it is critical to examine crime trends by individual house - looking at crime by neighborhood or case study area gives an inaccurate sense of how crime changes with renovation. The reason I measured crime within a "control" - the neighborhood - is to account for changes in crime that may have come as a result of natural increase or decrease, or a neighborhood-wide effort to decrease crime that does not have to do with renovation. In short, I did not want to give "credit" to renovated buildings for decreasing crime when they did not deserve it.

But there is something else working here, which is the crime fluctuation on those individual houses. According to the graphs, the Tanner Block and Operation Hope Renewed houses experienced dramatic increase in crime after renovation. But this is not necessarily a function of negative quality of life - it is necessary to examine the types of crime reports that these houses are experiencing more of. An increase of nuisance crime in the Tanner Block, for example, might in fact be a positive indicator of quality of life. The new residents of the Tanner Block houses might be more vigilant about their homes now that they are renovated, and therefore more likely to call the police than when the house was vacant.

It is critical for the property owners, the non-profit organizations, and RI Housing to look at each individual property and the crime history at that house. Let's take one house as an example of this process:

EXAMPLE 1

1 Tanner St.

Before:

After:

As you can see from 1 Tanner St., the increase of crimes occured mostly during the Summer of 1998 and the end of 1998 and beginning of 1999. Further research about the tenants of that house might uncover why crime increased after renovation.

Let's look at another example, from the West End project:

72 Bridgham

Before:

After:

Looking at the narrative of what happened (as well as when the crime occured) is necessary to figure out why some properties have so many more reports written after renovation.-