Housing Police

Housing police are police hired specifically to provide law enforcement services in public housing developments. The local Housing Authority (HA) that manages the public housing units may establish its own Housing Police Department, or the HA may choose to work with the local police department. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides funding and guidance for police services in public housing, but the authorization to establish a police department with full police powers comes from the state legislature. In order to improve the delivery of law enforcement in public housing, HUD commissioned Carroll Buracker and Associates to study policing in six HAs. Their report, Policing in Public Housing, provides recommendations for improvement and a model contract for arranging supplemental police coverage from the local police department. Recent changes in housing police departments can be attributed to the Buracker study and subsequent management directives from HUD.

Since 1937, federal funding has been used to build housing for low-income families, the elderly, and disabled individuals. Housing built in recent years tends to be low-rise units; the older projects are huge, high-rise, multifamily units that were built with little attention to the need for “defensible space.” These larger projects are located primarily in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. Chicago has nearly 35,000 low-rent units within 171 projects, whereas New York City has more than 160,400 such units within 319 housing projects. The high density of population within the housing projects makes it difficult to provide adequate law enforcement services. Although crime is often not reported separately for public housing, or is underreported because of resistance from tenants and officials,[Page 224] the public impression is that public housing projects are very dangerous places to live. Alex Kotlowitz's nonfiction book, There Are No Children Here, brings the horrifying world of the Chicago projects to life by following two boys growing up amid gangs, crime, drug use, violence, and terrible housing conditions.

The first housing police department was created in 1952 as a response to rising crime rates and vandalism in the public housing projects of New York City. After studying the situation, the New York City Police Department recommended that the Housing Authority establish its own housing police department. Over the years, the housing police department expanded by developing their own bureau of investigation and their own training program. But the department ceased to exist in 1995 when the 2,500 housing police, along with the transit police, merged with the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Mayor Rudolph Giuliani promised that the merger would provide better police coverage in the projects and greater efficiencies within the administration of policing services. By 1998, the New York Times was reporting a reduction in homicides by one third across the city and an even larger reduction in areas such as the 32nd Precinct in Harlem. The reduction was attributed to the use of computer maps for charting crime and the reassignment of police officers to antidrug campaigns. The housing police now function as the housing bureau within the NYPD.

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