Edmonton is becoming a more and more violent city. The employment boom has been enticing people from all over the country to move to the city over the past few years. This appears to have led to increased drug problems, the housing boom – making much of the rental housing unaffordable for lower/fixed income and the working poor – and homelessness. I’ve noticed an increase in crime since we moved to the city. That said, I still feel safer in Edmonton than I did when we lived in Winnipeg.

What is burning my biscuits this morning is a quote from the Edmonton Sun.

“It’s too close to my home. You hear something like this on the other side of town but not close to your place,” – Jo Hindal

Disclaimer: I don’t mean to pick on this woman in any way, shape or form. She’s just the most recent person credited with uttering the phrase in the local news. If someone else had said it I’d be crediting the statement to them… It’s the content of the statement I have an issue with, not the person who said it.

To me, this statement smacks of a NIMBY (not in my backyard) attitude I’ve noticed a lot in Edmonton lately. First there were the people who don’t want Habitat for Humanity homes built in their neighbourhoods [here, here, and here] and prefer those type of people move into lower income neighbourhoods. Hicks goes so far as to write that “Nobody wants somebody (or something) “below” them moving in next door.” Living in a lower income neighbourhood that’s slowly starting the climb out, I can honestly say I’d welcome the Habitat homes and their owners. The owners really show a pride in their homes and work to integrate into the neighbourhood. Just because someone is poorer than you doesn’t mean that they’re somehow lesser than you. *grrrr*

But I digress. This rant was supposed to be about crime and murders and not housing.

Crime happens all over the city. Sure it’s a shock when something happens so close to you. But it’s time to face it, there’s no limit on where it’s going to occur. Fights and crime aren’t locked within preset boundaries within the inner city. Checking the locations of many murders in the city will quickly demonstrate how spread out these events are. It’s only a matter of time before they’ve occurred in everyone’s backyard. Unless something changes. That’s a terribly disturbing statement. I’m beginning to wonder what Edmonton’s tipping point will be? Would the broken window theory work here? Many people interviewed indicating hearing fighting but how many (if any) of them called police?

For the sake of balance, the broken window theory is criticised here and here. Robin Skyler Tell (2004) writes:

In Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy, Earls and his co-authors Robert Sampson and Stephen Raudenbush put forth the concept of collective efficacy, “defined as social cohesion among neighbors and their willingness to intervene on behalf of the common good.” This collective efficacy, the study has shown, is the greatest predictor of neighborhood crime–not, it turns out, the windows, or any other symptom of “disorder.”

Whichever theory you subscribe to I think one thing is obvious. Everyone wants to see something done about the crime rate in Edmonton. There’s a significant amount of work that needs to be done on a community and social level. More affordable housing needs to exist. Community housing – with medical and psychiatric care facilities – needs to be increased for those with social or psychological issues. More importantly I think people need to stop turning their backs on disturbances and stop assuming that someone else will call the police or intervene. Chances are, that someone else is thinking the same thing.

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