Low Income Families, Crime and Community Concerns! Perception Versus Reality.

[N'Zinga Shani]

Why the Lowest Income Families Might Care the Most About Their Neig...
The Atlantic Cities, Emily Badger, 07/08/2013

Because of the run-down and sometimes violent nature of poor urban neighborhoods, we often assume that the people who live there don't care that much about where they live. A lot of academic research has gone into trying to understand the connection between perceptions of neighborhood safety and community cohesion, most of it finding that people are less invested in their community the more dangerous they think it is. An interesting study, published recently in the journal Race and Social Problems, adds a surprising wrinkle to what we know about these places. Read the complete post linked below.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/07/why-lowest-i...

This study investigated predictors of community care and vigilance among 70 African American residents living in high-crime, low-income neighborhoods. A stratified random sampling procedure was employed to select residents who completed a 20-item questionnaire assessing their sense of community care and vigilance and perceptions of perceived neighborhood physical and social disorder. We used police crime reports to assess the levels of property and violent offenses in the targeted neighborhoods. Our goal was to determine which of these variables best predicted community care and vigilance. The results of this study showed that social disorder and violent offenses negatively predicted community care and vigilance. Interestingly, the results also indicated that residents who reported the lowest income expressed the highest levels of community care and vigilance. Implications for community practice are discussed.  This extract is linked below; more information is available.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12552-012-9085-3