Neighborhood

Neighborhood Quality

Most of what we know about U.S. neighborhood quality comes from the American Housing Survey (AHS), which collects approximately 50,000 samples from Americans about housing and neighborhood quality on average every other year from a sample of counties. The AHS shows that the vast [Page 1999]majority of Americans like their neighborhoods. Specifically, the author has combined early AHS surveys. (Neighborhood quality was measured as “excellent,” “good,” “fair,” and “poor” with later ones, which measured neighborhood quality on a 1 to 10 scale from “worst” to “best.”) Over the past 25 years, these surveys show that 30% to 35% of Americans rate their neighborhood quality as “excellent.” Another 46% to 52% rate their neighborhood as “good” quality. Neighborhood is a haven for nearly all these residents. The Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist Murray Kempton underscored that haven concept when he defined a neighborhood as a place where “when you go out of it, you get beat up.”

Mott Street in New York City, the traditional center of Chinatown, where the Chinatown Community Center is located

Source: Derek Jensen.

The remaining 15% to 18% rate their neighborhood as “fair” or “poor” quality. Yet averages are misleading. There are striking differences among neighborhoods. In one neighborhood in Chester (Pennsylvania), 36% rated their neighborhood as fair quality and another 44% rated it as poor quality. The author identified more than half a dozen other U.S. neighborhoods where more than 70% of the respondents rated their neighborhoods as fair or poor quality.

There is nothing subtle about the causes of the different ratings. When residents do not identify even a single problem that bothers them, neighborhood quality will be rated excellent or good. When residents believe that a problem is so distressing that they want to leave, then their neighborhood is likely to be rated as fair or of poor quality. More specifically, perceptions of unsafe neighborhoods because of behavioral hazards (drug dealing, burglary, rape, and other criminal activities) and deteriorated physical [Page 2000]conditions (blighted buildings, properties, infrastructure, and litter) lead to a poor-quality neighborhood rating. Based on thousands of samples in many neighborhoods, the author found that if both crime and blight were distressing problems, then more than two thirds of the respondents rated their neighborhood as poor quality. Also, crime and blight are typically found with other stressors, such as odors or smoke from factories, incinerators, and other smokestack facilities; refineries and petroleum tank farms; airplane noise; and waste management facilities. In the most distressed neighborhoods, more than half of the population was bothered by more than 10 behavioral hazards and physical conditions.

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