Broken Window Syndrome Research Paper

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It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why derelict properties are a bad thing. One house can bring down an entire block, and then the whole street, and then a community. Like a set of dominos, the broken window syndrome happens when we stop caring about things like trash and blight, and worry about only the “big” issues like drug dealing. They go hand in hand. You have a seemingly normal block on a residential street in any neighborhood across this city. One of the homes is vacant, yet looks tidy from the outside. One day, a window is broken. The window stays broken, because the owner either doesn’t know about it or doesn’t care enough to fix it. Trash starts to pile up around the house, because again — the owner either doesn’t know about it or doesn’t care. A few weeks later, another window is broken, and the neighbors start to complain. “It’s an eyesore!” “Someone needs to do something about that window and that trash!” A few neighbors call 311, and still nothing happens for a few more weeks. The owner is finally cited, he comes out to the house, boards up the windows and moves on.…show more content…
It’s winter now, and they need a place to stay. The place is completely stripped of anything of value, what with the broken windows. Anything that wasn’t bolted to the floor was stripped out as soon as someone pried the nails from the boarded-up windows. The addicts are only looking for a way to get out of the cold and the damp, a hidden place to do their drugs and forget their troubles, if only for a short while. The neighbor across the street sees the addicts come and go, and she’s beginning to notice some dealers loitering on the corner. “Hm. Didn’t used to see stuff like that on this block”, she says to herself. “Damn shame to see the neighborhood going down.” She calls the police and attends a couple of neighborhood association meetings, but nothing happens until one night, the house catches on

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