Here's an interesting one:

Here's an interesting one:

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2008/08/crime-and-pover.html
Crime And Poverty
The Times catches up to Hannah Rosin of the Atlantic Monthly on the link between crime and Section 8 housing, but are much more PC about it. The Times lead:
As Program Moves Poor to Suburbs, Tensions Follow
By SOLOMON MOORE
ANTIOCH, Calif. — From the tough streets of Oakland, where so many of Alice Payne's relatives and friends had been shot to death, the newspaper advertisement for a federally assisted rental property in this Northern California suburb was like a bridge across the River Jordan.
Ms. Payne, a 42-year-old African-American mother of five, moved to Antioch in 2006. With the local real estate market slowing and a housing voucher covering two-thirds of the rent, she found she could afford a large, new home, with a pool, for $2,200 a month.
But old problems persisted. When her estranged husband was arrested, the local housing authority tried to cut off her subsidy, citing disturbances at her house. Then the police threatened to prosecute her landlord for any criminal activity or public nuisances caused by the family. The landlord forced the Paynes to leave when their lease was up.
Under the Section 8 federal housing voucher program, thousands of poor, urban and often African-American residents have left hardscrabble neighborhoods in the nation's largest cities and resettled in the suburbs.
Law enforcement experts and housing researchers argue that rising crime rates follow Section 8 recipients to their new homes, while other experts discount any direct link. But there is little doubt that cultural shock waves have followed the migration. Social and racial tensions between newcomers and their neighbors have increased, forcing suburban communities like Antioch to re-evaluate their civic identities along with their methods of dealing with the new residents.
"But there is little doubt that cultural shock waves have followed the migration" - thank heavens for investigative journalists!
Ms. Rosin, whose article was cited in the Times piece, wrote about the work done by a husband-wife team that had access to both crime and housing records in Memphis, TN:
About six months ago, they decided to put a hunch to the test. Janikowski merged his computer map of crime patterns with Betts's map of Section8 rentals. Where Janikowski saw a bunny rabbit, Betts saw a sideways horseshoe ("He has a better imagination," she said). Otherwise, the match was near-perfect. On the merged map, dense violent-crime areas are shaded dark blue, and Section8 addresses are represented by little red dots. All of the dark-blue areas are covered in little red dots, like bursts of gunfire. The rest of the city has almost no dots.
It was more than cultural shock waves in motion. The Times gets up close and personal with some locals:
Several white women, all professionals who attend the same church and have lived in Antioch for 12 years or more, recently sat outside a Starbucks coffee shop and discussed how their declining home equity had trapped them in a city they no longer recognize.
"My father got held up at gunpoint while he was renting a car to a young African-American man," said Rebecca Gustafson, 35, who owns a graphics and Web design company with her husband. Ms. Gustafson said her car had also been broken into three times before being stolen from her driveway.
Laura Reynolds, 36, an emergency room nurse, said that she often came home to her Country Hills development tract after working a late-shift to find young black teenagers strolling through her neighborhood.
"I know it sounds horrible, but they're scary. I'm sorry," said Ms. Reynolds, who like her two friends said she was conflicted about her newfound fear of black youths. "Sometimes I question myself, and I think, Would I feel this way if they were Mexican or white?"
Hmm - apparently Ms. Reynolds is Barack Obama's grandmother. Or maybe she was just channeling her inner Jesse Jackson.
My guess - if a group of Beverly hillbillys had moved in, crime had gone up, and friends were talking about criminal encounters with the hillbillys, well, yes, she would have a newfound fear of recently arrived rural rednecks. Or if a group of former Enron executives had moved in and suddenly ocn artists were operating on every street corner - well, I'm sure she would make the connection.
The Times does a great job of making it all the way through a story about neighborhood crime without mentioning community policing or New York City's famous success with zero tolerance. Somehow, in their current telling, a constant police presence cracking down on minor violations has become harassment, with no explanation of an alternative view.