Fixing Broken Windows— Strategies to Strengthen Housing Code Enforcement and Related Approaches to Community-Based Crime Prevention in Memphis

With research assistance from Tk Buchanan and Bonnie Binkley, and input from Richard Janikowski, J.D., Chair, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Memphis, and Susan Roakes, Ph.D., Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Memphis.
The Memphis Shelby Crime Commission expresses its gratitude to the Office of Code Enforcement, and to Donnie Mitchell and Debra Brown, who originally provided access to code enforcement data. The Crime Commission also acknowledges the code enforcement inspectors for their perspectives and the code enforcement staff, particularly Mr. Wicks, who gave so generously of his time and knowledge during the data collection process. Finally, the Crime Commission thanks Judge Larry Potter and his assistant, Ms. Paula Rhodes, for their valuable insight on code violations from a judicial perspective.

Introduction

Inspired by the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission’s vision that the quality of life in urban neighborhoods is related to crime, and that crime reduction and prevention strategies mean more than conventional law enforcement, this study follows from work such as Kelling and Cole’s landmark Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities (1996). Kelling and Cole argue that physical neglect as well as non-violent "quality of life" offenses increase fear of crime, empty neighborhoods of people who have a choice of where to live, and ultimately cede space to increasingly predatory individuals and more dangerous crimes against property and people. Like the "broken window" that remains unfixed and invites vandalism, physical neglect that is allowed to escalate and quality of life offenses that go unaddressed invite increasingly anti-social activity in urban neighborhoods. Integrating the creative understandings and evaluating the concrete crime reduction strategies that have emerged since the original (1982) conceptualization of the broken windows phenomenon, Kelling and Cole and others argue that "problem properties" attract and aggravate criminal activity in deteriorated or declining neighborhoods. It follows that dealing with problem properties gives communities another tool to enhance the safety of neighborhoods and the quality of life for residents.

This report offers a set of recommendations for the design and implementation of a comprehensive problem properties strategy in Memphis. Recommendations follow from analysis of the strengths and limitations of code enforcement as a basic anti-neglect strategy, and from an analysis of urban housing markets and the relationship between poverty, low-income housing and neighbor- hood blight. We conclude that traditional complaint-based code enforcement by itself cannot sustain a problem properties strategy, but that a new "case management" approach to code enforcement — in conjunction with other tactics that prioritize and target particular properties for multi-agency action, and that address the underlying need to maintain and improve the supply of affordable housing for low-income Memphians — can build on what we have learned from this research.

This executive summary presents key understandings from the report, which are numbered and presented with supportive discussion and highlighted points. We include as an attachment to the executive version of this report the full text of our concluding "Lessons Learned and Recommendations." For convenience, we also include as attachments to the executive report representative case studies, "quick facts" documenting specific findings from both our study of housing in Memphis and our analysis of code enforcement data, and illustrative graphics from the code enforcement analysis. Finally, we include a discussion of our data collection methodology as an attachment. The full report, including detailed documentation of data used to inform conclusions, methodology used to arrive at estimates, and issues concerning validity and reliability of data, along with a list of references, is posted on the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission website.

We anticipate that the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, as well as the University of Memphis’ Center for Community Criminology and Mid-South Training Institute, can play a critical role in the design and implementation of a problem properties initiative for Memphis. We envision a multi-agency strategy that would involve collaboration among city agencies (including law enforcement), community-based organizations such as community development corporations (CDCs), and property owners and managers in an effort to reduce crime and enhance safety and quality of life in Memphis neighborhoods.

Problem properties can be defined in terms of 1) physical neglect; 2) design and environmental characteristics that lend themselves to anti-social activity, (e.g. out-of-sight stairwells, unlighted walkways, and overgrown lines of sight); and as 3) "hotspots" for criminal activity including drug dealing and street crime.

Bearing these patterns in mind, problem properties initiatives include 1) strategies to prevent and reverse physical neglect; 2) environmental and architectural remedies based on crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED); and 3) property management tactics including both pre-screening of tenants and low tolerance for anti-social behavior. Basic to any problem properties initiative, however, is the strategy to deal with simple physical neglect because it is physical neglect that triggers the broken windows phenomenon.

A problem properties study such as ours cannot be understood apart from the context of the urban housing market. The role of poverty and the provision of affordable housing for low- income people, along with the decentralization of higher income populations from central cities, are the basis for an historical cycle of neglect in American cities. Clusters of problem properties reflect the cycle of deterioration that plagues the housing market in poor and lower-income neighborhoods.⁽¹⁾ We know that — for a variety of reasons — poor and lower-income neighborhoods typically suffer from higher crime rates than do middle class neighborhoods. When we compare poor and lower-income neighborhoods among themselves, however, the prevalence of problem properties appears to distinguish crime-ridden neighborhoods from safer neighborhoods.

Federal-local public housing and "Section 8"⁽²⁾ housing subsidy strategies — both of which were conceived to counter the debilitating effects of the low-income housing market — have been fraught with failure and counterproductive effects. Section 8 was to have integrated subsidized housing with moderate income housing; with integrated neighborhoods, it was argued that the cycle of decline typical of ghettoized and low-income housing markets (including public housing, which came to house the poorest of the poor and made local housing authorities hard-pressed to keep up their own properties) would be disrupted. It was assumed that the Section 8 subsidy would sustain profitability, which in turn would reinforce property owners’ incentive to maintain property and invest in sound place management (including tenant screening and rigorous application of lease-based expectations for responsible tenant behavior.)

The reality of clustering, however — where Section 8 units have not been dispersed but have tended to cluster in particular development and in particular neighborhoods (even when introduced into new neighborhoods) — suggests that Section 8 has continued to attract a subset of owners, not all of whom take advantage of profitability supports to implement sound policies. The local implementation of new federally-mandated strategies to correct past mistakes — by phasing out public housing in favor of theoretically scattered Section 8 units — is critical to the success of any strategy to deal with problem properties in Memphis.

Despite the obvious failures of pubic housing and Section 8, national experience with affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization — most often spearheaded by public-private partnerships involving non-profit community development corporations or private developers and local governments — demonstrates that it is possible to disrupt the cycle of deterioration in newer neighborhoods where deterioration has not gone too far or where older and irredeemable housing is cleared for new affordable housing. Successful residential developments (that include subsidized housing or not) involve extremely rigorous place management, which includes stringent screening on the front end. Screening might include not only the traditional credit check but also a search for criminal history and possibly even a home visit with prospective tenants. Rigorous place management also means well-articulated expectations for tenant behavior, low tolerance for anti-social behavior, and consistent application of well-articulated eviction procedures. The significance of the management protocol cannot be overstated; much of the problem with Section 8 clustering as it has developed during the past twenty-five years seems to be related not only to poor maintenance but to poor management.

As we have presented the challenges, code enforcement and related strategies to deal with problem properties must come to grips with the housing market we have described in three fundamental respects. 1) Enforcement strategies cannot be conceived without consideration of their impact on the supply of affordable housing; low-income owner-occupants and tenants will feel especially vulnerable and may themselves oppose enforcement; 2) other stakeholders, such as owners of rental property, may benefit (or perceive that they benefit) from status-quo levels of enforcement; anti-neglect strategies must include incentives and/or sanctions to neutralize opposition from this source; and 3) the role of public housing and Section 8 rental subsidies in fostering or combating blight cannot be ignored; locally the MHA would have to be a key player for an anti-neglect code enforcement strategy to be effective.

It is important that we understand what we are dealing with if we are to design an effective problem properties strategy for Memphis. This means not only understanding the very real need for affordable housing in Memphis, but also having a grasp of the dimensions of the problem. Unfortunately, characterizations that attempt to capture the breadth of the problem in Memphis — whether estimating the number of vacant lots, abandonments, or deteriorating properties that are not in compliance with the housing code — are based on different assumptions and data sources. The most commonly cited figures suggest that there are 22,000 vacant lots (which, if untended, are certainly a source of blight), as well as 18,000 vacant housing units (4,000 to 5,000 of which are assumed to be abandoned) and over 68,000 total units suffering from serious deterioration.

Our own analysis of data from several sources, including the county tax assessor and the 1996 American Housing survey in Memphis (the most recent source of detailed housing data) finds that these figures may be exaggerated. We learned from a comparison of assessor information with our visual survey in Binghamton, for example, that only one-third of vacant parcels are not in productive use. The majority of the parcels are in use as parking lots, right-of-ways and storage yards near commercial and industrial establishments, and tended yard space for adjacent residential properties. A vacant lot strategy may be less daunting than it at first appears if there are fewer potential problems than believed, with perhaps only 7,000 to 8,000 "derelict" vacant" lots city-wide.

Similarly, we found in our detailed analysis of the American Housing Survey that only 2300 housing units — rather than 4,000 to 5,000 — were vacant for reasons that did not appear to be temporary. About 67% of these units (about 1550) had been vacant for at least six months — that point at which the risk of true abandonment becomes more likely.

As for 68,000 deteriorating units (30% of Memphis’ total housing stock), we learned that this estimate is based on national assumptions about the relationship between the poverty rate in a city and the likelihood that families are ill-housed. Being ill-housed, however, means overcrowding (more than one person per room) or that families are expending more than one-third of their income on housing. While such data is important to an affordable housing strategy, they are not the same as an estimate of deteriorating housing. Our own detailed analysis of the American Housing survey data suggests that there may be a much smaller 38,000 units of occupied but at-risk housing.

Over and above the absence of a reliable inventory of problem properties, many of the problems that we documented with code enforcement are rooted in inadequate technology and organizational capacity more generally. We approached our study of code enforcement as an anti-neglect strategy by identifying three basic tasks of code enforcement — identification of non-compliant properties, the ability to monitor compliance and enforce sanctions, and the ability to remedy compliance failures (by razing properties or transferring ownership to those who will rehabilitate properties) — as well as four prerequisites to effective code enforcement that would be essential to any problem properties strategy.

Identification, monitoring and enforcement, and remediation are dependent on 1) having a "system" in place that is capable of actually carrying out the mission, including policies, procedures, and the technological capacity to identify, monitor, and enforce the code; 2 having the statutory authority appropriate to enforcement; 3) having the resolve to enforce the code (which is dependent on the conviction that it is both feasible and appropriate to do so); and 4) having adequate resources for remediation (including not only financing but the organizational capacity to conceive and implement a strategy for neighborhood restoration.) If one or more of these factors is insufficiently present in the system, code enforcement as an anti-neglect strategy will be flawed.

Our analysis reveals that anti-neglect housing (and commercial) codes, put in place across the country as a requirement for accessing Model Cities funding from the federal government in the 1960s, were flawed from the outset. The theory of "under-enforceability" argues that urban housing codes, if taken literally, are idealized and unrealistic given the established dynamics of urban housing markets and the public resources (or lack thereof) that are available to counter the private market. As presented by Ross (1996):

This is exactly the kind of scenario that self-interested stakeholders (e.g. irresponsible property owners) can exploit. When responsible authorities and front line personnel sense that they are laboring against the odds, the will to enforce the code is likely to erode. In other words, even if all violations to the code could be identified and monitored by means of an efficient and effective system, authorities have neither the commitment nor the ability to mobilize public or private resources to effect comprehensive restoration. In keeping with the theory of under-enforceability, the lack of commitment is based on a realistic assessment that comprehensive restoration is not feasible through code enforcement acting alone. This will be especially true in cities with high poverty rates and where affordable housing of whatever quality is perceived to be in short supply.

Unwilling to look beyond the idealized policy and set priorities, code enforcement authorities (and the political leadership that might be in the position to demand strategic reform) condone the setting of defacto priorities based on individual judgments of front-line inspectors. These judgments may be based on inspectors’ sense that compliance can be attained from particular violators more readily than from others, or on more personal (and less defensible) factors such as an inspector’s motivation to target offenders who have been personally disrespectful. While obvious and immediate threats to public health tend to be prioritized under these circumstances, as do properties that come to the attention of political stakeholders, individual judgments are by definition based on idiosyncratic, rather than strategic criteria; strategic criteria depend on collective knowledge that goes beyond the experience of any one inspector.

We know that under-enforcement is often justified given the fear of displacing low-income residents, and that this fear cannot be ignored. We also know, however, that the image of low-income owner-occupants (perhaps elderly) unable to maintain their property, and the related scenario where adult children inherit dilapidated property that they are ill-equipped to restore — images often offered to explain under-enforcement — account for only part of the problem. Equally important is the absence of motivation on the part of absentee investors to maintain low-rent properties.

Overall, our study of code enforcement reveals that neglect has multiple sources that call for diverse solutions. We have low-income owner-occupants in need of home repair assistance. We have deteriorating properties wherein heirs are uncertain what to do. We have absentee investors who may have intended to maintain properties but find too little profitability to do so. And it appears we have absentee investors who must be making a reasonable profit or they would not continue to acquire properties and specialize in low-income rentals. The realities of under-enforcement mean that the latter group are rarely held accountable. We have evidence strongly suggestive of properties changing hands to evade enforcement and situations where condemned properties are sold and resold.