Homelessness and Crime in Neighborhoods

Literature on the influence of homelessness on crime is lacking, particularly at the neighborhood level. This study seeks to understand how homelessness affects crime levels in a large city in the United States. Crime data, homeless count data, and neighborhood characteristics are obtained from three government public data sources. OLS Regression and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) are utilized to determine the relationship between homelessness and crime on a global and local level. The analyses revealed that homelessness is significantly, positively associated with crime, even when controlling for macro-level correlates of crime. The effect size of homelessness on crime varies across neighborhoods. Policy implications based on findings of the current study and future research are discussed.