Poverty and Progress in New York IX: Crime Trends in Public Housing, 2015-16

The Manhattan Institute’s series “Poverty and Progress in New York” tracks the effects of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s policies on lower-income New Yorkers. This report, the ninth installment, updates our analysis of the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP), an initiative to reduce crime in public housing.

• Overall, crime in the city’s public-housing developments trended up in the first five months of 2016—but MAP’s share of NYCHA crime did not.
• Previous declines in crime in MAP developments have stalled: MAP developments’ share of NYCHA’s violent crime remains at last year’s 17 percent, in contrast to the decline from 20 percent to 17 percent from 2014 to 2015.
• The absolute numbers of murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and car theft in MAP developments went up in the first five months of 2016—meaning that the measures undertaken by MAP have not sheltered the 15 developments from the rise in these crimes across NYCHA properties.

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