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Lead with empathy
It is important to recognize that all people want to feel safe and secure in and around their homes. Acknowledging neighbors' fears can improve the trust and confidence that the proposed affordable housing development will try to address potential concerns and be a community asset.[9] Affordable housing advocates can utilize a community engagement strategy that is led with empathy to figure out the root causes of the neighbor concerns around crime to better address actionable concerns with local governments and law enforcement.
Emphasize the positives
Affordable housing advocates can focus more on discussing the benefits that affordable housing brings to a community and pivot to these benefits when people bring up negative stereotypes about affordable housing. To help with this effort, the California Housing Partnership’s Affordable Housing Map and Benefits Calculator demonstrates the many ways that the construction of affordable housing improves economic and health outcomes for residents, especially children, and the neighborhood. Specifically, residents of affordable housing typically spend their rent savings on basic household needs, like food, transportation, health care, and other essentials, and thus help improve their and their children’s educational, health, social, and economic outcomes as well as local economies.[10] In addition, increased housing stability stemming from long-term affordability is one of the ways that affordable housing can help improve people’s economic outcomes, social connectedness, and health outcomes.[11] By focusing attention on the benefits of affordable housing rather than perceived negatives, people will develop more positive associations with affordable housing over time and possibly overcome some of their reservations about the building of affordable housing in their neighborhood.
Identify and educate tepid supporters
Affordable housing advocates can learn from people who may support affordable housing in general but have some reservations about new affordable housing being built near them and use what they learn to improve their messaging for future affordable housing efforts. A 2021 YouGov poll found 82% of those surveyed supported a national push for more housing, but the support for low-income housing dropped to 65% if it was proposed to be built in their local area.[12] In addition, a 2020 San Diego County study found the fear that new affordable housing would lead to “unwanted behaviors,” aka crime, was less of a concern than how the affordable housing building would look/aesthetics. [13]
To help address some of these reservations that people have about building new affordable housing in their neighborhood, affordable housing advocates can utilize a variety of ways to communicate how they are addressing potential community concerns, like aesthetics of the building, size of the building, or traffic, work with neighborhood groups and elected officials to gain support from broad coalitions of community members, and where possible discuss the success of previous affordable housing developments in region or state. [14] The key takeaway for advocates is that many people are not entirely against affordable housing, so there is an opportunity to work through people’s concerns about building affordable housing in their neighborhood. Especially if they also speak to its benefits not only to the future residents but also to the broader community.
Call bias by its name
Fourth, we need to recognize the racial and class-related biases that sometimes come with attitudes against affordable housing, especially when fear of crime is brought up to try and block the construction of affordable housing. Residents, business owners, and politicians point to the “character” of the neighborhood they fear will be negatively affected by the new affordable housing or a fear of a “criminal element” moving in, but that can just be a convenient way to mask their wish to keep “certain people” out of the neighborhood. [15]
All the coded language/dog whistles around affordable housing can be easy for some to detect, but all too often, these views are held widely enough that people can use these dog whistle arguments to help keep affordable housing developments from being built.[16] Affordable housing advocates can learn how racist and classist dog whistles may impact efforts to build affordable housing and develop strategies to push back against these divisive tactics where possible.
Conclusion
I hope to have provided some insights into why linking affordable housing and crime is at the very least problematic.[17] I encourage affordable housing advocates to continue to speak out about how affordable housing benefits residents and the surrounding community. Because when we spend more time showcasing the positives of affordable housing and less time speaking to unsupported NIMBY viewpoints, like affordable housing increases crime, we can help further our efforts to build and preserve more affordable housing.
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