At the end of the day, you can't address urban poverty by creating ghettos. Such areas just become the breeding ground for the next generation of urban poor--kids who have no exposure to successful behaviors and attitudes, but do have a cultivated distrust of authority and social structure. It's not an "unfair" burden on residents. It's a burden that we have to bear in order to create integrated, successful communities.
I agree that it's hard to prove that conclusion. I lived in Humboldt Park next door, right next to Section 8 buildings, and didn't have any issues related to the Section 8 folks. I think a more likely explanation is that affluent, rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods attract certain kinds of crime.
When I worked at the Chicago Tribune, I covered crime extensively and saw some distinct patterns that coincided with gentrification in Wicker Park: an increased concentration of night time crime, specifically theft and muggings, along Milwaukee avenue. Because crime is down on average, crime definitely did not go up in Wicker Park, but theft, assault, and battery did not go down as quickly as the average in the night life zones. That said, it seems very likely some former public housing residents caused trouble in some of their new neighborhoods.
Similarly, I had a petty thief from the projects once tell me that on 35th street, he saw me as either a drug buyer or a do-gooder, but either way it wouldn't make a lot of sense to mess with me. But if he saw me in Hyde Park, where I lived at the time, he would have seen me as "prey". I think it's safe to say that to some degree, affluent neighborhoods are targeted by criminals because they are affluent.
There are parallels here to mass transit. Minor theft is very high at downtown CTA stations, places with tremendous foot traffic and jostling bodies. It's one of the few crime categories that has seen some increase/very little decrease and it seems to track with the widespread use of smartphones.
Your comment also gets at some of the really tough questions of social ethics around these issues. For example: is it better to have more petty crime or to incarcerate people at unprecedented rates?
None of this stuff is easy, but the ways it is often framed -- like making unsubstantiated causal links between Section 8 and crime -- make the conversation that much harder.
I lived on Leavitt for a number of years. In that time my home was broken into and I was robbed at gun / knife point multiple times. Every time this happened the police pointed out two buildings that were public housing as the likely source. I tend to believe them as well as the CAPS officers who agreed.
I am a Detroit native so I hate the idea of ghettos but I would prefer to live around people of similar means / financial ability. Public housing introduces inorganic problems with equality and perceived equality.
At the end of the day, you can't address urban poverty by creating ghettos. Such areas just become the breeding ground for the next generation of urban poor--kids who have no exposure to successful behaviors and attitudes, but do have a cultivated distrust of authority and social structure. It's not an "unfair" burden on residents. It's a burden that we have to bear in order to create integrated, successful communities.