The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. 

Department of Justice and prepared the following final report: 

Document Title: Working Paper: Potential Models for 

Understanding Crime Impacts of High or 

Increasing Unoccupied Housing Rates in 

Unexpected Places, and How to Prevent Them 

Author: Ralph B. Taylor 

Document No.: 229914 

Date Received: March 2010 

Award Number: N/A 

This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. 

To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federallyfunded grant final report available electronically in addition to 

traditional paper copies. 

 

Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect 

the official position or policies of the U.S. 

Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 1 

Potential Models for Understanding Crime Impacts of High or Increasing Unoccupied 

Housing Rates in Unexpected Places, and How to Prevent Them 

Ralph B. Taylor 

Contact Information: 

Department of Criminal Justice 

Temple University 

1115 West Berks Street 

Philadelphia, PA 19122 

telephone: 215 204 7169 

Fax: 610 446 9023 

email: ralph.taylor@temple.edu

Prepared for the National Institute of Justice meeting on Home Foreclosures and Crime, March 31-April 1, 

2009, Charlotte, NC. Opinions are solely the authors and reflect neither the opinions nor the official 

policies of the Department of Justice, the National Institute of Justice, or Temple University. The author 

thanks Ronald Wilson for numerous stimulating discussions that shaped many of the ideas in the current 

manuscript.

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 2 

Table of Contents 

Table of Contents............................................................................................................................ 2

Statement of the Problem................................................................................................................ 4

The Same or Different?................................................................................................................... 6

Will Higher Foreclosure and Abandonment Rates Lead to Higher Crime, and If So How?........ 11

Political Economy..................................................................................................................... 12

Ways the perspective may be useful..................................................................................... 12

Ways the perspective may not be useful............................................................................... 15

The Incivilities Thesis............................................................................................................... 16

Ways the perspective may be useful..................................................................................... 16

Ways the perspective may not be useful............................................................................... 18

Crime Pattern Theory................................................................................................................ 20

Ways the perspective may be useful..................................................................................... 21

Ways the perspective may not be useful............................................................................... 22

Social Disorganization Theory / Collective Efficacy Theory................................................... 23

Ways the perspective may be useful..................................................................................... 24

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 3 

Ways the perspective may not be useful............................................................................... 25

Routine Activity Theory and Related Territorial Concerns...................................................... 26

Ways the perspective may be useful..................................................................................... 27

Ways the perspective may not be useful............................................................................... 28

Race-Based Models of Neighborhood Preservation and Change ............................................. 29

Sense of Community/Attachment to Place/Defended Neighborhood Models ......................... 29

Implications for Research Agenda Setting ................................................................................... 30

References..................................................................................................................................... 33

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 4 

Statement of the Problem 

The current work considers how spatial and temporal variations in the rates at which 

residential housing becomes unoccupied are likely to affect community crime rates. To figure out 

how this might work, current theoretical approaches to understanding community crime rates are 

examined to learn how they would view the relevant dynamics. If the goal is to prevent adverse 

impacts of unoccupied housing on community crime rates, the best prevention program will be 

the one that is based on the clearest and most strongly supported theory. That examination will 

reveal significant different advantages and disadvantages associated with each perspective. But 

more importantly, different theoretical perspectives considered suggest different ways to 

approach community crime prevention initiatives, [87] co-produced public safety, [14, 73, 76] 

and third party policing roles [64, 65]. Stated differently, the theoretical vantage point suggests 

different logic models for intervention and orients practitioners toward potential intervention 

points and strategies [88]. The focus is on neighborhood level or community level dynamics. 

The relevant context is the current US mortgage crisis. Starting sometime in 2007, 

sections of the US started experiencing dramatic increases in mortgage foreclosure or home 

abandonment rates as the crisis in sub-prime mortgage markets spread. That has led to concerns 

about the potential crime impacts of these increases. 

By way of introduction it is recognized that the processes of mortgage defaults, 

foreclosures, bank possessions and re-sales are extremely complex and varied phenomena. 

Because of that complexity and the range of processes and actors that may be involved, the focus 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 5 

here is just on patterns of and increases in unoccupied housing. These changes in the unoccupied 

rate or UR arise from many sources including but not limited to: changes in the rates at which 

defaulting borrowers walk away from their properties pre-foreclosure; changes in the rates of 

post foreclosure proceedings which force residents to move out; and other market dynamics 

leading to houses being unoccupied, perhaps while for sale or rent, for extremely long periods. 

Although these properties in some instances can be taken over by criminal elements, the focus is 

how the levels, changes in levels, and patterning of unoccupied residential houses affects later 

crime and how we can prevent those effects. 

The paper simply takes as starting points two considerations. First, that these interrelated 

phenomena are going to lead to some communities experiencing much higher prevalence rates of 

unoccupied single unit houses than previously experienced in those locations. Second, that 

although these higher URs have a range of economic, social, political, economic and cultural 

impacts, the concern with such impacts is only insofar as they might connect to later crime 

changes. 

The first portion briefly compares and contrasts the current housing crisis with a 

preceding period of rapid shifts in house values: rapid housing turnover and associated 

neighborhood racial change in large cities from the late 1950s through the 1970s. This was one 

relatively recent time where neighborhoods in many sections of the country experienced sizable 

significant neighborhood demographic changes [47, 71, 72]. It also places the current crisis in 

the context of an emerging field, contributed to by several disciplines, on increasing suburban 

poverty.[62, 68] The case will be made that one of the limitations of most of the available 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 6 

theoretical alternatives for understanding the dynamics around URs is their failure to 

theoretically integrate with these perspectives. 

The next part moves through a number of theoretical perspectives on communities and 

crime. Each is briefly summarized. Each points to different key features of the current situation 

and different dynamics, and each suggests different intervention points and strategies. Each has a 

different idea of how or why increasing URs might lead to increasing crime or disorder. 

Depending upon the intervention point or intervention type, different roles are suggested for law 

enforcement, police community relations, housing authorities, and municipal and metropolitan 

governance structures. Broadly speaking, the relevant prevention initiatives connect to several 

areas of policy research: problem oriented policing [42, 43], co-produced public safety [74], 

collective crime prevention efforts [87], third party policing [65] and neighborhood economic 

preservation policies [1]. 

A short closing segment suggests there are serious limitations in the ability of any of the 

current communities and crime perspectives to guide future intervention efforts. All are to some 

degree inadequate or incomplete. It outlines some of the things we need to learn if we are to 

develop sound, empirically supported intervention logics. 

The Same or Different? 

Recent reports in the popular press suggest that numerous suburban counties in the 

United States are experiencing unprecedentedly high or dramatically increasing rates of home 

abandonment and mortgage foreclosure [75]. Of necessity, these foreclosures and abandonments 

before foreclosure can dramatically shrink community household populations. Over time, 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 7 

foreclosure and abandonment rates may contribute independently to declining community house 

values even in a time when house values in many regions of the country are already broadly 

declining. 

Traditionally, declining house values have been interpreted as an indicator of broader 

community decline, usually linked to dramatic changes in socioeconomic or racial composition 

of neighborhood residents, the willingness of businesses to locate in those places, and attendant 

increases in social problems more generally [49, 117]. Rapid neighborhood structural change 

can link to changing fear and changing relative crime rates.[103, 104] Rapid neighborhood 

house value decline, especially in the context of declining services, can lead to powerful conflicts 

between local community organizations and local governmental agencies, and has the potential 

to dramatically undermine public authority [32, 33]. 

A growing body of work, however, suggests structural economic changes in suburban 

communities may come about in ways that are different from the rapid demographic shifts seen 

in large central city neighborhoods in the 1960s and 1970s. Rapid population shifts in urban 

communities were often accompanied by and seen as driven by racial changes in who moved in 

versus who moved out. Changing racial composition foreshadowed for many residents declining 

neighborhood economic and service delivery levels [27, 28]. 

The linkages may be working differently in many places, however, in the last two 

decades. Pre-foreclosure crisis increases in suburban poverty prior to say 2005, as well as postcrisis dynamics appear to be different [96]. Following a political economy model (see below) 

researchers have suggested that patterns of capital circulation within and across communities are 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 8 

changing dramatically without accompanying widespread changes in who moves in and who 

moves out [96]. Looking at the “Camden syndrome” Smith et al. (2001: 524) argued that 

The historical experience of Camden County [NJ] suggests that the cyclical 

nature of economic expansion and recession is vital in this understanding, as 

regional economic shocks are localized in vulnerable neighborhoods. Yet 

evolving patterns of chronic capital flight also underscore the role of class and 

race. Racial change is not an independent variable “explaining” decline but 

instead reflects the uneven geography of opportunity created in large part through 

the operation of urban and regional housing markets. 

Stated differently, the current crises altering suburban communities arise from – and 

presumably can only be fixed by altering – the uneven circulation of available capital across 

these communities. Housing market dynamics, and the unevenness within and between those 

community-level housing markets, appear to be more central than race or cultural differentials, 

although obviously related to the latter. In cities, however, race differentials continue to be key 

[4]. 

If current pre- and post-foreclosure crisis increases in URs are primarily a result of how 

much money is available on reasonable terms to support homebuyers, and not about impacts of 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 9 

social problems, racial change, or economic changes spreading out from central cities, then this 

also calls for a radical reinterpretation of abandoned houses. 

Empirical work on the incivilities thesis has shown that urban residents’ perceptions of 

problems like abandoned houses covary with their perceptions of other physical problems like 

poorly maintained houses, and of other social problems like unruly teen groups [105]. 

In contrast, the mortgage foreclosure crisis may be creating a situation leading to 

different interpretations of and impacts of increasing numbers of unoccupied houses in suburban 

neighborhoods as compared to urban neighborhoods 

It is not argued that a specific incivility like a boarded up, vacant house is interpreted in 

the same way in different urban neighborhoods, or even by different people in the same 

neighborhood. Interpretations of incivilities are complex [48, 51, 53]. But in urban locations the 

prevalence rates for vacant housing are likely to covary closely with a range of other 

neighborhood social problems and with neighborhood economic and perhaps racial and ethnic 

structure. It is in part because these different problems covary closely over space that vacant 

houses are interpreted as part and parcel of broader societal ills [78]. 

Since high or increasing URs in suburban locales connect differently with social 

problems and demographic structure than they do in urban, core city locales, the presence of 

these unoccupied houses may be interpreted differently. There are very few data bearing directly 

on this question. At its simplest, do suburbanites in the US, given the current mortgage crisis, 

interpret high URs in their community as a signal disorder [53] foretelling imminent community 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 10 

decline? Or is the interpretation that the URs reflect an ongoing national crisis? Or does the 

suburban interpretation depend on the temporal pacing of the UR increase, or its spatial 

concentration, or other factors? It will be important to learn more about how suburban residents 

interpret increasing numbers of unoccupied houses in their communities, and whether or how 

those interpretations link to intentions to move, current community engagement, or willingness 

to maintain or improve their own properties. If perceptions of an appreciating local and national 

housing market drive reinvestment [98], perceptions of depreciating markets may drive underinvestment. 

Looking at the current mortgage crisis more broadly, there are several features of the 

context which may reduce the applicability of previous community and crime models for 

understanding crime and related impacts. 

1. It may be happening in many places all at once. Many communities within a county, or 

within a metropolitan area or within a region of the state may be experiencing roughly 

comparable economic disruptions of circulating capital simultaneously. If this is true, perhaps the 

capabilities of the current crisis to generate localized crime concerns, or highly localized crime 

increases, may be blunted. 

2. If all of the communities in one jurisdiction or in one part of jurisdiction are being 

affected similarly the relative ordering of communities may not shift. In other words, there may 

not be implications for cross community shifts in relative crime levels in the long-term, 

presuming that the economic changes are happening at comparable rates across communities. 

Spatial patterning of URs is key. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 11 

Will Higher Foreclosure and Abandonment Rates Lead to Higher Crime, and If So 

How? 

 This section considers how currently available theoretical models would expect current or 

future URs due to the mortgage crisis to affect later crime rates. Different models suggest 

different ecological pathways of influence. 

 The different models are presented to attune the reader to the range of dynamics which 

are potentially relevant. Different dynamics in turn suggest alternate prevention pathways and 

logics. 

No claim is made that one model is better than another. What will become clear, 

however, is that none of the models are sufficiently contextually sensitive and nuanced, or 

sufficiently steeped in the relevant regional science, community change, or political economy 

scholarships that they could provide a roadmap for anticipating crime-related consequences or 

for planning crime prevention. 

 As the reader will see below, all of these models are to a considerable extent contextually 

naïve. If there is one lesson to be learned from both the previous work in urban renewal and the 

current work on increasing suburban poverty, is that local dynamics are complex mixes of 

contextual features and broader, more global operating forces [39, 68, 96, 118]. A second 

emerging lesson seems to be that suburban residents today, like those fifty years ago, sought 

security [40, 55], viewing it as a key part of achieving “the American dream” [67]. A generation 

earlier in the 1920s and 1930s their parents had sought the same goals by leaving large cities’ 

crowded central districts for those cities’ outer sections [29, 111]. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 12 

Political Economy

What it says

Political economy models focus on the economic value of communities to outside 

interests, the functional value of communities for insiders, and the conflicts arising from 

potential contrasts between these two. For example, in one model the concept of exchange value 

captures the economic value of investments, rents, land, businesses and tax revenues potentially 

available to public agencies outside the community, and to outside private investors. The concept 

of use value captures the functional and symbolic utility of the neighborhood for the residents 

themselves [59, 60]. The focus is on how capital circulates into and out of communities. These 

circulations depend on how external investors’ and public agencies’ perceptions of potential 

capital gains are weighed against resource requirements. 

All these shape the treatment of communities by outside powerful interests. Conflicts 

arise when actions toward communities undercut with the functional [35], social [39] and 

symbolic benefits [36, 85] of these communities for residents and local business owners. 

Ways the perspective may be useful 

The model focuses on capital flows. The model assumes that the current state of local 

and regional political economies will be among the most critical determinants for the futures of 

neighborhoods at risk. The factors, actors, and institutions driving capital into and out of 

locations of course are multi-faceted and extremely complex. 

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 13 

In addition, the model focuses attention on the discrepancies between the views of two 

groups: current residents, and outside agents, the latter including both public and private 

agencies. It's likely, especially as the national economy continues to crater in coming months 

and perhaps years that these differences will grow significantly. 

For example, it makes sense for residents able to afford to continue living in their homes 

in neighborhoods experiencing increasing URs to lobby heavily for maintained or increased 

levels of local public services: more police patrols, better housing code enforcement, parks and 

playground maintenance, and the like. Those households which can afford to stay will want to 

maintain or increase current services despite visible evidence of declining community value. 

They will want this even though public agencies are probably experiencing declining revenues 

and even initiating service cuts, both of these driven by state and national as well as local 

changes. In short, exchange values in some communities may be declining due to more 

foreclosures and public agencies with fewer resources, but for the remaining financially healthy 

households some neighborhood use values may remain relatively high – at least in the short term. 

Those healthy households are likely to demand constant or increasing services in order to help 

sustain their use values. Conflicts around service delivery, including public safety, are likely to 

intensify dramatically, and these intensifying conflicts have significant implications specifically 

for co-produced safety initiatives [74] and more broadly for views about the legitimacy of public 

institutions [58]. 

On the positive side, however, the model suggests why residents in financially healthy 

households may be increasingly willing to contribute significant time and effort to community 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 14 

improvement efforts such as maintaining grounds around unoccupied properties, and safety coproduction efforts such as community crime prevention, especially if they receive some symbolic 

or tangible support from local public agencies. Residents in healthy households will find it in 

their best interest to engage in collective action which in the long run will help shore up 

neighborhood use values. It's easy to imagine efforts, and they are happening [41], where 

resident-based associations work with not only police but local public officials and local banking 

officials so those organizations are fully aware of which properties are unoccupied. The groups 

can maintain grounds around those properties and detail members to keep an eye on them hoping 

to keep vandals, in-migrating criminal elements and metal scavengers away. Suddenly, in a new 

and different context, neighborhood watch [86] may be relevant again. Once the ratio of 

financially healthy households to unoccupied houses gets too low, however, these efforts may 

sputter. 

The third key feature of this model is its attention to external political dynamics as a 

separate arena. How a neighborhood conducts its “foreign relations” [24] is critical. A 

neighborhood’s capability to engage in successful foreign relations, to gain political leverage 

with outside political or economic interests, is distinct from a neighborhood’s degree of internal 

social and political integration and organization [24]. This idea contradicts both the revised 

systemic model [17] which incorporates three levels of social control [52] and the fundamental 

assumptions embedded into the most widely used collective efficacy indicators [90]. External 

political capabilities appear to be somewhat separate and distinct from internal self-regulatory 

and organizational capacities. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 15 

Ways the perspective may not be useful

The political economy perspective privileges economic dynamics above all other possible 

dynamics: political, social, cultural, historical, and contextual. In its strongest form this 

perspective may be too deterministic. Although this is line with some suburban economic work 

on the “Camden syndrome” [96] and some other work on suburban poverty growth [62, 68] its 

rejection of potentially relevant cultural [34] or racial [4, 32, 33] or safety related dynamics [55] 

may be too strong. 

 Second, if political economy is the key engine driving both URs and degree and type of 

crime impacts, it will be extremely difficult for resident-based interest groups to convince 

outside agencies to maintain levels of resource commitment in the current economic context. If 

rent prices, housing values, and business and property tax returns drive all subsequent dynamics, 

there is little that can be done to help cushion communities from the adverse effects, crime and 

otherwise, arising from increasing URs; this model predicts that external private and public 

agents will progressively withdraw services and investments in such a situation. These agents 

will be unlikely to contribute in any material way to these communities or these community 

efforts unless they can be convinced such actions or resources will help maintain exchange 

values or at least substantially slow their slide. 

 Third, although the model concentrates on the conflict between use values and exchange 

values, its meta-orientation implies that the economic dynamics usually win. Numerous 

counterexamples, however, describe situations where organized local interests successfully 

defeated investment decisions supported by local politicians, thereby preserving neighborhood 

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 16 

quality [3, 29, 70, 112]. In short, it is not clear if the broader economic determinism assumed by 

the model is correct. 

The Incivilities Thesis

The incivilities thesis refers to a family of models connecting observed and perceived 

physical and social indicators of slipping neighborhood quality with changing community crime 

rates, community reactions to crime, and community structural changes [105, 107]. Despite 

staunch defenders [56] and vociferous critics [48], long-term longitudinal work in at least one 

city over a decade has suggested that incivilities may shape prime community structure and 

residents’ safety concerns, although the same incivilities are not as powerfully influential as 

many had thought [107]. More recent elaboration's of this thesis [53, 77] have returned to an 

earlier symbolic interactionist perspective on incivilities [51] highlighting the varying meanings 

residents and others may attach to such incivilities. 

Ways the perspective may be useful 

 Two of the most widely used assessed and perceived incivility indicators have been 

vacant houses and graffiti. In short, this model has identified abandoned or under-maintained 

houses and properties as key reflections of the quality of neighborhood life and as key 

determinants of perceived and unfolding neighborhood futures. Therefore, in a time of 

dramatically increasing URs, this model may help us understand the community dynamics and 

crime consequences emerging as part of the mortgage foreclosure crisis. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 17 

 The implication of this first point is that keeping houses occupied may be critical to 

stabilizing neighborhoods, keeping crime rates from accelerating, and allaying residents’ safety 

concerns. The leverage point suggested here is that financial institutions, local government, and 

local neighborhood organizations would want to work together to find ways to keep houses 

occupied and maintained, even if the original owner walks away, or if the houses in foreclosure 

proceedings. Creative occupancy solutions would seem to be required if the prime goal is 

forestalling potential community crime rate increases or structural declines. This same point 

comes up again after considering territorial functioning [102]. 

 Second, the longitudinal versions of this perspective paid close attention to the rate of 

change of incivilities. The rate of changing incivilities may be as or more important than the 

level per se [95]. Focus on the rates of change aligns closely with several other ecological 

models which also have been applied to communities and crime [106] and the human ecology 

framework more generally [50]. In short, some versions of this thesis highlight the rate rather 

than the degree of change. 

If one assumes that it is residents’ perceptions of the rate of change, and that their 

perceptions are driven by marginal rate changes, then this perspective also helps direct efforts. 

More specifically, it would direct attention to those communities where URs or abandonment 

rates historically been at or close to zero. It would suggest that it is in those locations specifically 

where public and financial institutions would want to work hardest to avoid increasing URs. It 

will be the first unoccupied houses in a previously fully settled community that will be most 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 18 

unsettling to residents. In other words, this perspective suggests focusing attention on preventing 

initial changes in community URs, especially if they have been historically extremely low. 

 Not enough is known currently to speculate on what changes in URs will draw the 

attention of potential offenders from outside the community in question. 

 Third, at least in some forms the incivilities thesis highlights issues of interpretation. 

Critical to unpacking structural, crime, and reaction to crime impacts of changing URs is 

understanding how those are interpreted [53, 100, 102]. This issue was alluded to earlier. 

 Previous work on incivilities and on human territorial signage has indicated that residents 

and outsiders often perceive the situation somewhat differently [51, 102]. That may prove true 

here as well, as outside forces and residents construct different interpretations of increasing URs. 

Ways the perspective may not be useful 

There are some ways in which the incivilities thesis may not prove helpful for 

understanding crime related consequences of increasing URs. Perhaps most importantly, the 

incivilities thesis implies that a range of assessed or perceived physical and social problems will 

cluster together and feed one another in urban settings. Residents in hard hit urban 

neighborhoods often implicitly or explicitly make these connections [78, 107]. Problems with 

more unsupervised teen groups go hand-in-hand with graffiti problems; higher rates of vacant 

housing go hand-in-hand with drug and gang problems because vacant buildings create 

opportunity spaces for gang activities including indoor markets, and places to shoot up [2, 25, 

94]. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 19 

The situation may be very different, however, in suburban settings. In these places, 

abandoned or foreclosed homes may not co-occur, at least in the short run, with other social and 

physical problems. Instead, the unoccupied houses symbolize severe market dysfunctionality 

rather than high local problem rates. Of course whether or not the connection occurs may depend 

on local factors. 

To put the point differently, many incivilities researchers have assumed that high rates of 

assessed or perceived incivilities reflect higher rates of underlying disorder [56, 95, 116]. 

Although these assumptions have not been substantiated [105], and indeed work on convergent 

and discriminant validation suggest these assumptions may be in error [107], given the current 

housing crisis it seems highly unlikely that residents are likely to make inferences following the 

disorder Î incivilities logic. We have the same observed condition but in a different time and 

with a dramatically different economic context compared to the situations to which this thesis 

was initially applied. 

 A second way the incivilities thesis may not prove helpful arises from the increasing 

attention [53, 77] to an old idea [51]: the importance of subjective interpretations of observed 

incivilities. If we accept this symbolic interactionist perspective on incivilities, public agencies, 

including those involved in neighborhood stabilization and law enforcement, will be unable to 

prioritize communities more deserving of interventions for maintaining neighborhood stability 

and safety. Tracking abandonment or delinquent tax or foreclosure rates, given this view, is not 

a reasonable way to identify the highest priority communities for intervention. Rather, this 

perspective suggests that it would only be through extensive interview work with residents and 

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 20 

leaders that one could determine the communities most at risk. Those most at risk will not 

necessarily be the communities with the highest URs, but rather would be the communities 

where the recent changes in URs are having the most sizable impact on residents’ and key 

stakeholders’ views of the community. This is probably too labor intensive a requirement to 

feasibly link to intervention strategies. 

Crime Pattern Theory

 Crime pattern theory [5, 8-10] combines the assumptions of the rational offender 

perspective [20, 19, 21, 23] with behavioral geography [83, 82] and information about the spatial 

distributions of various land uses. Some of the latter at certain times may, depending upon 

offender motivation and how these locations intersect with potential offender activity spaces and 

search areas [80], serve as crime targets. 

 The rational offender perspective contributes to crime pattern theory by assuming that 

potential offenders are constantly evaluating potential targets and victims, and weighing a range 

of benefits and costs associated with various types of offending [30]. Behavioral geography 

concentrates attention on potential targets within potential offenders’ activity spaces; the latter 

are often anchored by nodes such as residence, work and recreation locations [9]. It further 

suggests that locations adjacent to activity spaces will be entered when the potential offender 

seeks additional potential targets. Land use becomes relevant because it is a broader 

environmental back cloth against which these dynamics operate. Crime pattern theory assumes 

that offenders are simultaneously sensitive to both spatial and temporal variations in risks [101] 

and opportunities [69, 81]. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 21 

Ways the perspective may be useful 

 Reports in the popular press have described how both vandals and burglars seeking 

valuable scrap metals target unoccupied homes in suburban communities [41]. Crime pattern 

theory is useful insofar as it offers specific predictions about the abandoned locations most likely 

to be chosen by vandals and burglars. This perspective draws attention to the geographic 

positioning of unoccupied houses, rather than the UR itself. Some examples follow. 

 (1) A dense cluster of abandoned houses is more likely to draw scrap metal burglars than 

are the same number of abandoned houses spread out over a greater area. The cluster presents 

more of a lure. The cluster also presents a location where the density of people keeping a watch 

on empty houses is lower. Research suggests burglars are sensitive to surveillance opportunities 

[7, 12]. 

 (2) Burglars put a premium on moving into an area quickly and moving out equally 

quickly, while maximizing gain from their forays [82, 99]. Foreclosed or abandoned houses 

closer to high volume traffic routes are more likely to be attacked either by vandals or burglars. 

Foreclosed or abandoned houses deeper in the neighborhood and farther away from high-volume 

traffic routes are probably less likely to be targeted [6, 46]. Unoccupied houses in neighborhoods 

with less permeable neighborhood boundaries are probably at less risk of burglary or vandalism 

from those outside the neighborhood [113, 115]. 

 (3) Earlier work on suburban home burglary has confirmed that burglars are sensitive to 

the relationship between the targeted house and other nearby houses which might hold people 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 22 

watching what the offender does [13, 12]. Information about layout plans and occupation 

patterns can help create target risk profiles. 

 Putting this last point more generally, crime pattern theory can help law enforcement and 

prevention partnerships better allocate resources and watchfulness in a situation where a large 

number of unoccupied houses may draw burglars or vandals. Simple point mapping of 

unoccupied homes on map layers clearly describing the different capacities of the road system, 

regularly updated, combined with some guidelines about the determinants of target attractiveness 

may be sufficient to help both law enforcement and preventive partnerships allocate efforts both 

across communities and even within communities. 

 Second, crime pattern theory, at least as it applies to burglary, places a premium on 

offender knowledge [109]. That knowledge helps to explain both burglary repeat victimization 

patterns and burglary near-repeat victimization patterns. Therefore, in addition to the 

information mentioned in the above paragraph, additional information about the timing and 

location of burglarized and vandalized abandoned homes can help create a rolling risk profile for 

nearby communities hosting sizable or increasing numbers of unoccupied homes but where 

burglary or vandalism rates have not yet accelerated. This too, will help more closely target 

community-based or co-produced prevention efforts. 

Ways the perspective may not be useful

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 23 

To my (admittedly limited) knowledge, the applicability of crime pattern theory to a 

situation where target density is rapidly increasing in unpredictable ways is not yet known. Most 

of the studies using crime pattern theory and addressing property crimes have assumed a 

relatively constant or only slowly changing environmental back cloth. Rapidly increasing URs 

in some areas may represent a challenge to this model. How vigilant are potential offenders in 

keeping track of increasing numbers of abandoned or foreclosed homes in their vicinity, i.e., 

intersecting with their activity spaces or awareness spaces? I know of no work specifically 

addressing this question. 

Social Disorganization Theory / Collective Efficacy Theory

Social disorganization theory and collective efficacy theory are addressed together. They 

both rely upon the same underlying dynamic. The many complexities, questions, and strengths of 

this theoretical perspective are not considered here [57, 108]. Each assumes that key community 

demographic features make it more or less likely that there will be strong local social networks 

and/or strong cohesiveness among residents, and each assumes that these social dynamics will 

lead to more or less willingness to intervene in situations where community norms of acceptable 

behavior are being flouted; those local social variations then link to variations in both offending 

and victimization rates. Classic social disorganization theory anticipates that willingness to 

intervene shapes subsequent delinquency prevalence and incidence rates [92] but may be less 

applicable to serious crime [17]. Newer versions of the theory have nonetheless expanded to 

consider offending and victimization rates [17, 89]. Further, as mentioned above collective 

efficacy theory treats internal social dynamics and the ability to leverage extra resources as 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 24 

closely covarying even though these are distinct levels of informal control. Substantial 

neighborhood work, by contrast, suggests public control may not be closely linked to intraneighborhood, secondary control capabilities. 

Ways the perspective may be useful 

Social disorganization theories, since they are at heart ecological theories [50], highlight 

the critical importance of rapid community changes [16]. Thus, this perspective may prove 

particularly useful in a time of rapidly changing community fabrics arising from marked local 

and national economic shifts. 

Second, the theory directs attention to specific features of community demographic 

structure that make it more or less likely that residents will be willing to intervene. More 

specifically, generally these models assume that low SES, unstable, racially or ethnically 

heterogeneous, or primarily minority occupied communities are the least likely to demonstrate 

strong willingness to intervene [17, 61]. There is mixed empirical quantitative support for these 

expected connections depending on the community element in question [79]. Nonetheless, to 

some degree background easily-obtainable demographic information could be used to better 

target communities at risk and in need of more prevention services, law-enforcement or thirdparty policing [65] around housing issues. Given two communities, both experiencing 

comparable rapidly increasing URs, this perspective suggests which of those communities will 

be more likely to experience increased crime problems because of weaker internal capacities to 

mount informal small group [52] or more organized collective prevention activities [87]. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 25 

Demographic structure, of course, connects only weakly with actual internal capacities, but at 

least it provides a non-random way to allocate resources if the latter are scarce. 

Ways the perspective may not be useful 

In its classical form the social disorganization model has been embedded within a 

particular understanding of urban growth dynamics now recognized as most historically 

appropriate for the first half of the 20th century [15, 16]. If we are thinking about metropolitan 

areas or suburban locations more generally that embedding is probably no longer appropriate. 

What is needed is a model recognizing that most metropolitan areas in the US currently 

are highly differentiated poly-nucleated structures [44, 45]. Suburban communities currently 

experiencing distress due to high foreclosure rates are nested within and shaped by those 

complex structures. Rethinking may be needed about how a specific suburban community’s 

risks reflect its position within that broader structure. This is part of what the “Camden 

syndrome” is about [96]. 

For example, in 1990, among the 27 largest metropolitan areas, Charlotte’s suburban 

poverty levels were closest to the poverty levels observed in corresponding central cities [62]. In 

other words, the way this MSA was organized economically before the housing crisis made the 

suburban communities’ poverty rates more closely match those seen in the central city of the 

MSA. I do not know enough about this locale to offer a guess about why that might be true. 

What this finding does suggest, however, is that the seeds of Charlotte's very intense 

mortgage foreclosure crisis [11] were nested in part within the unfolding structure of this MSA 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 26 

over the last 20 years. If our focus is on understanding differential risk of crime and related 

outcomes due to high URs across MSAs, the social disorganization/collective efficacy model is 

of little use. Elaborations of the social disorganization/collective efficacy model are needed to 

clarify how such contextual variations affect local capacities across MSAs. Stronger integration 

with the regional science work is needed. 

 Also limiting this model’s utility is its emphasis on endogenous social dynamics. 

Debates about whether local social capacities can be built with the assistance of outsiders, or 

must rely solely on local native talent date back to the beginning of the 20th century and 

differing views about the settlement house movement [18]. If the long-term viability of local 

social dynamics does depend primarily upon local residents and leaders, then this would suggest 

that efforts to build community policing partnerships geared to enhancing social capital and 

thereby crime prevention capabilities may prove fruitless. 

 Finally, and this is not a limitation but rather a question: the spatial scale of the dynamics 

described by social disorganization/collective efficacy may not be appropriate for units of 

analysis above the community level. The social dynamics described may be outweighed by other 

dynamics when MSAs are the unit of analysis. 

Routine Activity Theory and Related Territorial Concerns

Routine activity theory (RAT), like the incivility thesis and like social 

disorganization/collective efficacy, comes in many different variations. The model idea has been 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 27 

progressively elaborated over the last quarter-century. Some versions of this theory apply to 

national trends [22]. Others suggest the theory only applies to crime situation dynamics that are 

a matter of seconds and feet [26]. 

These disagreements aside, core concepts in RAT include: volume of motivated nearby 

potential offenders, intensity and proximity of valuable targets, the absence of capable guardians, 

and, in recent elaborations [31], place managers and intimate handlers who can control potential 

offenders. 

Ways the perspective may be useful 

Routine activities theory proves helpful in several ways for thinking about impacts 

associated with high URs. To start with the obvious point, unoccupied homes and the 

surrounding grounds have no capable guardians. 

If multiple nearby targets are under consideration, then we could say a place like a street 

block now has fewer place managers. The place manager idea incorporated into RAT has its 

origin within territorial models. In the framework of human territorial functioning a significant 

gap in the overlapping geographies of resident- based control has been created [102: 320]. RAT 

tells us this is inherently problematic. RAT, in contrast to the incivilities thesis, does not care 

about what the house or the grounds look like as long as those conditions are unrelated to target 

attractiveness. What’s important is that there is someone inside. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 28 

RAT and territorial functioning both, therefore, suggest a simple policy prescription for 

preventing increasing crime in the context of increasing URs. Have someone responsible live in 

the property. The incivilities thesis would add – and take care of the surrounding grounds. 

Second, RAT like crime pattern theory suggests clustering of attractive targets may prove 

relevant. If there are several unoccupied homes close together all of which can provide some 

aluminum and copper to a foraging burglar, suddenly each home becomes somewhat more 

attractive. So we are directed again to the spatial relationship between potential targets, i.e. 

unoccupied homes. The prevention implication is that agencies and community organizations 

will want to survey more carefully and organize their activities more closely around clusters of 

unoccupied homes rather than widely separated ones. 

Third, if adjoining renting or homeowning residents are viewed as potential place 

managers, RAT sensitizes us to daily migration patterns within communities. A neighborhood 

with more mothers or fathers staying home to watch small children is at less risk of increasing 

vandalism or burglary than another neighborhood which empties out during the day because of 

dual income earning households, even though the number or density of unoccupied properties 

may be comparable across the two communities. 

Ways the perspective may not be useful 

RAT is fundamentally about a three-way relationship: if there are lots of potential 

offenders nearby, and if there are lots of attractive targets, and if capable guardians are scarce, 

then under these conditions crime rates will be higher. Thinking about how to translate this 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 29 

contingent relationship into a workable policy and practice framework for preventive 

partnerships or for law enforcement personnel presents considerable complexity. Thinking about 

solid indicators for each concept with acceptable construct validity rather than rough proxies has 

been and continues to be problematic for this theory.

Race-Based Models of Neighborhood Preservation and Change

Substantial research considering rapid urban neighborhood change has highlighted the 

importance of racial residential patterns, segregation patterns, prejudice, and tolerance for 

diversity [33, 63, 66, 117]. This literature is enormously complex. One general finding 

emerging from this work, however, is that there is no one racial tipping point [38, 37, 91, 97, 

114]. Rather, different people have different sensitivities and different contexts can shape those 

sensitivities. 

In general the suburban poverty work suggests as noted above that white flight is unlikely 

to drive the differential growth of poverty in suburban locations. Rather, proximity to the core 

city in the MSA and differential capital circulation patterns are probably more relevant. I am not 

saying that racial or cultural dynamics are completely irrelevant; rather, given the structure of the 

current crisis, racial and ethnic issues may be less prominent than they have been historically. 

Sense of Community/Attachment to Place/Defended Neighborhood Models

Communities where residents share a stronger sense of cohesion and a stronger 

attachment to the locale in general are likely to be more stable neighborhoods [54, 93]. Stability 

feeds attachment and attachment in turn feeds stability [84]. Although attachment and stability 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 30 

can create political insularity [24] they also create high density webs of local knowledge and 

awareness of local events [39]. The implication for prevention is that in highly attached 

communities, groups of residents are more likely to respond more quickly to increasing URs, 

more likely to take collective action, and will be more effective partners with public agencies 

which can provide them with information about current and future foreclosure locations. 

Implications for Research Agenda Setting 

The various models reviewed represent some of the most widely used for understanding 

community crime differentials. Community is used loosely here to mean anything from street 

blocks to MSAs. It appears that no one model would be a better guide than another for thinking 

about how to prevent increasing crime, how to encourage the most effective community crime 

prevention, or how to structure the most effective partnerships to co-produce public safety. All 

models have substantial deficiencies. The current foreclosure crisis may represent in its pacing 

and spatial patterning a substantial challenge to several of them. Only models securely grounded 

in an ecological framework seem designed from the ground up for modeling impacts and 

responses to such challenges. 

But even these frameworks are lacking in some ways. Most importantly, all of these 

models save for the political economy one are inadequately connected with current scholarship 

on the growth of suburban poverty and the connections between economics and MSA structures. 

Both these latter streams of scholarship point up key themes of contextual variation and 

historicity. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 31 

One idea presented in the suburban poverty work is the Camden syndrome. This idea 

highlights the importance of circulating capital pattern differentials and downplays the 

importance of who is moving in versus out or who is moving where. This idea seems 

particularly relevant to the current mortgage crisis and the attendant rapid shifts in URs and 

(potentially) crime rates. It will be a challenge to integrate these ideas with the more micro level 

dynamics more familiar to most communities and crime researchers. The integration is essential, 

however, if we wish to be able to provide policy guidance to various officials and agencies 

whose responsibilities may range from a state or metropolitan area to a municipality to a 

community. 

The incompleteness of all the considered models aside, however, there is one obvious but 

perhaps critical point on which several theories seem to agree: there may be some communities 

whose safety would benefit substantially were it possible to keep foreclosed or pre-foreclosed 

but abandoned properties occupied and perhaps maintained. The occupants could be original 

owners or other responsible householders. Is this feasible to pursue as a policy intervention 

point? Structuring such a policy, were it pursued, would need to give careful attention to the 

differential community stabilization and safety benefits likely to be generated by such occupancy 

and target post-abandonment or post-foreclosure sites carefully. Crime pattern theory, RAT and 

territorial models all strongly endorse such a notion. 

Finally, the timing of this suburban crisis follows by about two years a significant 

retrospective on the work of Herbert Gans [110]. Gans made many contributions to sociology, 

planning and other disciplines. He was ahead of his time in wanting to learn more about suburbs 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 32 

[40]. Gans' seminal contribution to suburban sociology, the Levittowners, proved so informative 

because it was based on careful ethnographic observation [68]. Understanding how the current 

mortgage crisis and attendant high URs may link to local organizing efforts, to offending 

patterns, to co-produced safety, and to potential neighborhood instability may require not only 

substantial work with archival records and resident-based surveys, but also ethnographies carried 

out in a range of MSAs and a range of communities. Given that the cratering of the economy is 

likely to continue for some time, and the consequences emerging from that to continue for even 

longer, now is probably an opportune time to plan how to do the research to understand what is 

happening; only if we do this can we most effectively prevent the most adverse consequences. 

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 
Models for understanding crime impacts of unoccupied houses  Page 33 

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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

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and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.