
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?