What Can Be Done About Criminality Linked to Housing Instability?

four men in striped clothing with ankle chains
A chain gang from the turn of the 20th century.

Housing insecurity and criminality are linked. How, and why? For decades in North America, many were quick to answer. People who are housing insecure — low and no income tenants together with the homeless — are nature’s degenerates who gravitate towards social housing, which they then ruin.

Today, studies of housing insecurity and criminality have moved beyond discriminatory attitudes to study cycles of poverty-based crime, incarceration, and recidivism, together with the human survival strategies that provoke them.

Can secure, low rent housing solve some or all of these problems? For a good survey of some of the study results, as well as options for future action, read more in Housing Matters: Can Housing Interventions Reduce Incarceration and Recidivism?

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