Poverty and Progress in New York VI: Crime Trends in Public Housing, 2006-2015

The Manhattan Institute’s “Poverty and Progress in New York” series tracks the effects of Mayor de Blasio’s policies on lower-income New Yorkers. This paper, the sixth installment, examines crime trends in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) developments, the city’s 334 public-housing projects, during the last decade.

In particular, we focus on the 15 properties targeted by the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (APNS) with year-to-date crime data through November 1, 2015.

• Murders declined 25% and shootings declined 13% in the 15 APNS developments, but both are up slightly in the rest of NYCHA.
• Major crimes overall are up 2% in the 319 NYCHA developments that did not receive new policing resources, but down 8% in the 15 targeted APNS developments.
• The APNS initiative does not appear to have been successful to date in reducing car theft, robbery, or burglary relative to the rest of NYCHA.
• The APNS properties’ share of NYCHA’s major crime has fallen from 20% at plan launch to 16% today, but NYCHA as a whole still suffers from a disproportionate amount of violent crime--including the APNS projects.

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