William P. McCarty

As with the articles in this issue, this introduction reflects the views of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The purpose of this study is to ascertain whether the amount of crime in mobile home communities is greater than the amount of crime in other types of neighborhoods and to determine whether the difference in crime levels is significant even after controlling for multiple other variables. Using official crime reports and other data from Omaha, Nebraska, the study finds no significant difference in population-weighted crime rates between blocks with mobile home communities and other types of residential blocks. Multivariate models show that the presence of mobile home communities did not significantly affect crime rates. The implications of these findings for land use policy are explored.