A spatial analysis of the impact of housing foreclosures on residential burglary

•Limited research has investigated the impact of housing foreclosures on crime.•Explored the spillover effects of foreclosures beyond neighborhood boundaries.•Utilized GWR method to tackle the spatial heterogeneity issue.•Results indicate that foreclosures have a positive impact on burglary, but only in the neighborhoods in which they are located.•The relationship of foreclosures and burglary varied dramatically across neighborhoods.

In recent years, housing foreclosure has become a national crisis in the U.S. but limited geographical research has investigated the implications of this problem on neighborhood crime. This article adds to the existing research by investigating the impact of housing foreclosures on residential burglary using foreclosure and crime data aggregated to block groups in Louisville, the largest city in Kentucky. In particular, we explore the spillover effects of foreclosures beyond neighborhood boundaries and utilize geographically weighted regression (GWR) to tackle the spatial heterogeneity issues complicating the relationship between foreclosures and neighborhood crime. Results from the three regression models support our hypothesis that foreclosures have a statistically significant positive impact on burglary, but only in the neighborhoods in which they are located. More importantly, the relationships between foreclosures and burglary vary dramatically across neighborhoods – Foreclosure is a significant predictor of burglary for disadvantaged urban neighborhoods but not for more affluent suburban ones after accounting for other contextual variables. Implications are discussed.