Decomposing Neighbourhood (In)Stability: The Structural Determinants of Turnover and Implications for Neighbourhood Crime

Abstract While the human ecological model views neighbourhood instability as a function of household-level decisions, the present study draws on a political economy of place perspective to highlight how the profit-seeking interests of outside actors shapes instability, with consequences for neighbourhood crime. Using data on neighbourhoods in Los Angeles County from 2007 to 2013, I decompose levels of stability according to housing dynamics (displacement, development, changing rents, sales, low-income units), and assess their direct and indirect association with violent and property crime. I find that, over a 7-year period, poorer neighbourhoods are more vulnerable to these exchange-value pressures, stability is more consequential to crime in high-poverty neighbourhoods, and certain housing dynamics are associated with increasing crime through their detrimental effect on renter stability.