Homelessness and Crime: An Examination of California
Abstract
Abstract We employ a unique 10-year panel dataset from California to examine both the effect crime has on homelessness as well as the effect homelessness has on crime. Our main estimator accounts for endogeneity by incorporating dynamics, controlling for time invariant unobserved heterogeneity, and relaxing the strict exogeneity assumption for our key variables of interest. We find strong evidence that regions experiencing increases in property crime, but not violent crime, may expect a practically significant increase in homelessness, whereas regions with increases in homelessness tend to see increases in the number of violent crimes, but not property crimes. Robustness and falsification checks confirm the results.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Homelessness and Social Issues
Crime Patterns and Interventions
Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis
Publication details
- Journal / source
- The B E Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy
- Publisher
- Walter de Gruyter GmbH
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 787–825
- Publication date
- 27 April 2026
- Language
- EN