Executive Summary
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 fifth installment, examines crime trends in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) developments, the city’s 334 public-housing projects, during the last decade.
Key Findings
- As crime in the rest of NYC fell sharply during 2006–15, crime in NYCHA developments has—after an initial drop during 2006–09—since returned to 2006 levels: relative to the rest of the city, New York’s public-housing projects are thus far more dangerous now than they were a decade ago.
- Under Mayor de Blasio, crime in NYCHA developments—absolutely and as a share of the city total—has remained largely unchanged.
- Violent crime continues to disproportionately strike NYCHA developments: in 2015, they housed less than 5 percent of New York’s population but saw more than 10 percent of the city’s assaults and rapes, as well as 15 percent of its murders.
