Remaking vacant lots to cut crime

Editors note: Local cities such as LaFayette and Rossville — as well as unincorporated communities in Walker County — can find reassurance in this story that details how major metropolitan areas battling blight are finding those efforts cut criminal activity, protect property values and improve a neighborhood’s quality of life.

Many cities are finding that something as simple as installing a split rail fence around a cleared and mowed vacant lot not only fights urban blight, it can help fight crime.

Inspired by a program in Philadelphia, cities such as Cincinnati, Houston and New Orleans are using heavy equipment to clear, grade and seed thousands of vacant lots, believing that empty properties with head-high weeds, scrubby trees, trash and debris are excellent hiding places for guns, drugs and criminal activity. After the initial cleanup, cities partner with neighborhood groups and nonprofits to care for the lots, or in some instances sell them to people who agree to maintain or develop them.

Installing a fence around a vacant lot can make a huge difference by signaling that although a lot is vacant, it isn’t abandoned. The theory, akin to the “broken windows” philosophy of policing, is that minor crimes, such as littering and vandalism, are signs of social disorder that often invite more serious crime.

“Without it, it’s as if the property has no ownership and it’s open to any sort of activity,” said Debora Flora, executive director of the Mahoning County Land Bank in Youngstown, Ohio, where 23,000 parcels of land are vacant.

The cleanup effort has been spurred by an explosion of vacant property, especially in Rust Belt cities like Youngstown, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit, where populations have declined or the 2008 foreclosure crisis swelled the number of vacancies. Detroit has more than 6,000 vacant lots it offers for urban agriculture or as solutions to urban runoff. Chicago has nearly 13,500 lots that are city-owned and is selling them for $1.

In New Orleans, the widespread devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 made the cleanup of vacant property a huge, ongoing undertaking. There,

This vacant lot in Detroit has been replanted with pennycress, a cover crop that is considered suitable for conversion to biofuel. Many cities are clearing vacant lots as a way to fight crime as well as blight. (The Associated Press)