DescriptionAfter the Second World War, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provided funding to local housing authorities to build large scale public housing developments in many cities across the United States. Unfortunately, most of those housing projects were beset with a host of problems as time progressed, including deteriorating building structures, concentrated poverty, racial segregation, and crime. In perhaps no city is this story more heavily studied than in Chicago. Chicago’s public housing tribulations are legendary and are well documented in the academic literature. Many of Chicago’s projects were large high-rise projects located in disadvantaged, isolated, and residentially distinct neighborhoods with strong gang, drug, and crime presence. However, relatively little research has examined the association between Chicago’s public housing and homicide. Specifically, it is uncertain as to whether the unique physical and social environments of public housing developments have an independent effect on lethal violence or whether the high rates of homicides occurring in public housing areas are influenced predominately by neighborhood conditions. Utilizing the Chicago Homicide Data set, this dissertation disentangles the effects of public housing on lethal violence. This study, first, estimated negative binominal regression models to determine the effect of the presence of public housing on tract level rates of homicide. The results of these analyses indicate that the presence of public housing is not a significant predictor of the rates of lethal violence and neighborhood conditions are driving the high rates of homicides occurring in public housing areas. Secondly, the nature of lethal violence occurring in public housing areas was determined by using negative binominal regression and bivariate analyses. Homicides, disaggregated by motive, do not occur at higher rates or disproportionately in Chicago’s tracts with public housing compared to tracts without. The findings from this dissertation indicate that public housing areas do not seem to be micro places that influence a specific type of violence and that neighborhood conditions are driving the high rates of homicide occurring in public housing areas rather than the unique physical and social environments of public housing developments.