Lessons Learned From a Citywide Abandoned Housing Experiment

John MacDonald, Ahuva Jacobowitz, Jason Gravel, Mitchell Smith, Robert Stokes, Vicky Tam, Eugenia South and Charles Branas

Journal of the American Planning Association, 2024, vol. 90, issue 1, 159-172

Abstract: Problem, research strategy, and findingsThe negative impact of vacant and abandoned housing in city neighborhoods is extreme, affecting health and quality of life, promoting violence, and leading to further abandonment. One approach to addressing abandoned housing is to intervene with low-cost interventions that provide a visual sense of ownership. We tested whether a low-cost remediation of abandoned and vacant houses or a trash cleanup intervention would make a noticeable difference in the levels of nearby disrepair, disorder, and public safety. The abandoned housing remediation and trash cleanup interventions were a test of compliance with municipal ordinances. We used an experimental design to test the causal effects of the ordinances and because the scale of abandonment was too large to provide treatment to all abandoned houses in the city. We used systematic social observation methods to rate changes in disrepair, disorder, and litter at housing sites and on the city blocks they were located and police-reported data on gun violence and illegal substance use. Our experimental design allowed us to see whether observed disrepair, disorder, and public safety improved after working windows and doors were installed on abandoned houses compared with a trash cleanup around properties or a no-intervention control condition. Our results showed significant changes in observed disrepair, disorder, and gun violence and illustrate the benefits of experimental evaluations of place-based changes to the built environment.Takeaway for practiceImproving compliance with ordinances to remediate abandoned housing can make a noticeable difference in disrepair in neighborhoods and contribute to improved public safety. We illustrate how planners can use field experiments in partnership with city agencies, nonprofit community groups, and local universities to discover novel approaches to advance place-based changes to the built environment that can help economically disadvantaged communities abate problems of physical disorder.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01944363.2022.2128855 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rjpaxx:v:90:y:2024:i:1:p:159-172

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rjpa20

DOI: 10.1080/01944363.2022.2128855

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the American Planning Association is currently edited by Sandi Rosenbloom

More articles in Journal of the American Planning Association from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().