Many Charlotte neighborhood leaders have voiced frustration with boarded-up housing and neglected property in their communities.
Conventional wisdom and the “broken window” theory of crime holds that run-down homes are not only eyesores, they beget crime. No wonder then that community activists from Helping Empower Local People have identified such problems as a top concern in 2007.
Below is a list of area neighborhoods in which more than one out of every 20 houses or apartments received code violations in a year. The number following the neighborhood name represents the percentage of housing units with code violations.
Smallwood — 18.4
Druid Hills South — 12.9
Druid Hills North — 9.0
Lakewood — 8.4
Washington Heights — 8.2
Villa Heights — 6.9
Biddleville — 6.3
Wilson Heights — 5.7
Lockwood — 5.5
This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2007.
