A Pittsburgh neighborhood organization has found that the best way to reduce crime and blight is to purchase the nuisance properties. This hands-on approach has spurred revitalization and reduced crime while allowing the neighborhood to maintain diversity.
In 1979, the East Liberty Quarter Chamber of Commerce formed the nonprofit East Liberty Development, Inc. (ELDI) to facilitate redevelopment efforts in the near-downtown neighborhood and begin the process of reversing the effects of urban renewal.
The organization’s first projects in the early and mid-1980s focused on improving the center of the district including infrastructure improvements and renovation of key neighborhood properties. Private development came to the area in the late 1980s. Projects opened and closed, and the neighborhood’s residential stability was low and the unemployment rate was high. ELDI built for-sale homes on scattered vacant sites (below). Yet the neighborhood was perceived as unsafe and many residents felt that the City had abandoned them.
In the late-1990s, new leaders in East Liberty brought a new sense of urgency to tackling old problems. Through a community-driving process, stakeholders developed a community plan, A Vision for East Liberty.
Rather than collecting dust, the neighborhood went about implementing the plan. From the Pittsburg Post-Gazette:
Through the 2000s, ELDI was buying, renovating and replacing properties for mixed-income buyers, but it intensified its efforts in 2008, going after property owners who allowed criminal behavior as long as tenants didn’t complain about lax maintenance.
ELDI’s acquisition of both large and small apartment buildings led to renovations and the hiring of effective property managers and off-duty police officers. At the same time, ELDI kept the same racial composition and low rents, Numeritics reported.
As it happens, the nonprofit had acquired 3 percent of the neighborhood’s residential rental units, unwittingly hitting the percentage identified in hot-spot theory, which says that 3 percent of locations are responsible for 50 percent of police calls.
“We called the police, but as soon as the police left it started up again,” said Eric Jester, then the housing development manager for East Liberty Development Inc. “We tried code enforcement, we tried yelling, we tried shaming.”
“We finally decided it’s probably better if we owned the properties.”
A new study has quantified the results of the East Liberty Development Inc. strategy of using real estate to address crime. The East Liberty Crime Data Analysis by research and consulting firm Numeritics is summarized below:
Between 2008 and 2012, crime in East Liberty’s residential neighborhood fell by 49 percent, and residential housing values rose 120%. This remarkable transformation was driven largely by a crime reduction strategy employed by East Liberty Development (ELDI), in which the organization purchased nuisance properties that were known to be hotbeds of crime.
The first theory that applies to ELDI’s strategy is “hot spot” theory; the concept that a very small percentage of physical addresses in a neighborhood are responsible for a disproportionate amount of criminal activity. In a study that came closest to what was happening in East Liberty, 3 percent of addresses generated 50 percent of all calls to the police.
In attempts to ameliorate these issues, the owners of the properties were generally uncooperative, and attempts to alter their behavior through code enforcement efforts did not work. Instead, ELDI decided to target the nuisance properties, or “hot spots” by purchasing them. Using a mix of creative financing, over a five year time period 2008-2012, ELDI was able to acquire approximately 200 property units, or nearly 3 percent of all rental units in East Liberty. Once these units were purchased, the next step was to figure out what to do with them, which brings us to our next relevant academic theory.
The second relevant theory to ELDI’s strategy is called “place-based management.” Place-based initiatives attempt to leverage resources by focusing investments and corrective action measures in targeted places. These measures can be instrumental in changing the culture of disorderly conduct and criminal activities in specific places. Once ELDI acquired these properties, the organization put strong property management in place to enforce already existing rules. Law-abiding residents were not displaced, and residents were much more satisfied with a renewed sense of order.
The use of property-management as a place-based approach to crime reduction is novel in that most crime prevention efforts at hot spots rely on police. The chief limitation of a police-centric approach is that crime returns when the police leave. ELDI’s approach has delivered sustained reductions in crime because, unlike police, effective property management is a constant presence. These efforts in turn fostered a sense of “collective efficacy,” a third theory that posits that when people feel a sense of social cohesion and belonging, they are more willing to intervene on behalf of the common good.
The outcome of ELDI’s property acquisition and management strategy, combined with the resulting increased collective efficacy, was an astounding 49 percent reduction in residential crime in the neighborhood during the period 2008-2012 (above). It is especially noteworthy that these developments occurred in an environment where the median income stagnated and actually declined in real terms and where there was minimal change in the racial composition of the neighborhood. This crime reduction is significantly greater than what occurred, on average, in the City of Pittsburgh during that period, and is also noticeably greater than that observed for comparable neighborhoods in close proximity to East Liberty. The crime reduction results observed in East Liberty mirror those of other research that show that targeting high crime places cuts crime at the targeted place, and does not cause crime to re-emerge elsewhere.
The theoretical underpinnings of the ELDI strategy are sound, and we have shown a high level of correlation between their initiatives and the resulting crime reduction.
More from the Post-Gazette:
ELDI’s role in ensuring mixed-income rentals and home sales throughout the neighborhood have contributed to rising property values, as other developers flock to the market. But there are still many affordable rentals, said Skip Schwab, ELDI’s deputy director. The nonprofit has used state low-income tax credits for equity to afford renovating derelict buildings, he said.
“The neighborhood is now a much more attractive place to live, and so demand for affordable has increased,” he said, adding that whether you live in a market rate house or an affordable apartment, “safety is nonnegotiable.”
Note: Entry image not in Pittsburgh