The Institutional Production of Housing Instability: Neighborhood Exposure to Intensive Low-Level Policing and Extractive Landlord Practices

• In Event: Crime, Law and Deviance Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 4: Criminal Justice System Actors (2)

Abstract

Police encounters and evictions are two of the most common forms of state contact experienced by marginalized residents of urban neighborhoods, yet the institutional relationship linking them remains understudied. This study advances an institutional approach to housing instability by examining how the discretionary practices of police and landlords jointly structure neighborhood disadvantage. Using a distance-adjusted Propensity Score Matching (DAPSm) design exploiting shifts in NYPD precinct boundaries, and a comprehensive dataset of nearly 3 million eviction filings and over 3.1 million arrests from 2006 to 2016, I find that exposure to high rates of low-level policing significantly increase eviction filing rates: census blocks in high-arrest precincts experience 1.4 more eviction filings per 1,000 households per month compared to matched blocks in low-arrest precincts (a 17.9% increase). The displacement effect of low-level policing is substantially amplified in areas where landlords are more likely to engage in extractive management practices, illustrating landlord discretion and criminal enforcement intersect to produce housing instability. These findings show that evictions can be generated through exposure to the entanglement of the institutional practices of law enforcement and property management.

Author

• Aaron Stagoff-Belfort, University of Chicago