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Working-class Houston Suburb Tries a Beautiful Way to Fight Crime, but With an Ugly Edge

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Alief, a working-class suburb of Houston that is 71% Hispanic and black, is planting 1,200 new trees, but the objective is not just to beautify the neighborhood. Rather, the idea is that trees will fight crime. The notion that an area’s crime rate will go down if it has more trees is one of the fanciful socialist assumptions that the Biden regime and other Leftists are using to cause so much trouble in America today.

To be sure, it’s terrific that Alief will have more trees. Houston’s KTRK reported Friday that the tree-planting initiative is based on a study “published in the Journal of Public Economics,” which purported to establish that “when temperatures go up, crime does, too.” This is bad for Alief, which “averages 10 degrees hotter in the summer months than well-shaded areas of Houston.” This is because “Alief has only an 11% tree canopy, compared to the Houston average of 33%.” So if Alief cools off, the criminals will cool off. Or at least that’s the idea.

Alief resident Terry Jones explained, “If we can cool things off, give people something to do that’s outside that’s going to engage them. The commissioner has so many projects that are in the works. There’s going to be public art. We’re improving the parks.” So presumably people will frolic in the parks and enjoy the shade of the new trees rather than, say, knocking over a bank.

Barbara Quattro, the president of Alief’s Super Neighborhood council, explained, “If the place looks ugly and barren and it looks like nobody cares for it, nobody will care for it. I think that encourages crime. It encourages vandalism. Trees are a win-win for everybody. They not only look good, but they make the place look good, and people respect it more.” That’s a perfectly reasonable idea.

And there is more as well behind the idea of planting trees to fight crime. It’s a longstanding assumption on the Left that crime is a result of poverty; hence the “War on Poverty” that started in the 1960s, with the construction of the comprehensive welfare system that was supposedly meant to end that poverty. And not only does poverty cause crime, but a lack of trees is supposedly a hallmark of poverty.

No less a luminary than Alleged Vice President Kamala Harris demonstrated that she believed all this back in Nov. 2021, when she visited NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to hear a presentation about the space program and climate change. At one point, Harris asked, “Can you, can you measure, um, trees?” The presenter responded, “Yes!” Harris continued: “‘Cause part of that data that you are referring to, and it’s in EJ — environmental justice — that you can also track by race their averages in terms of the number of trees in the neighborhood where people live.”

There is more. Read the rest here.

Comments

  1. I am not that positive this is not a bad idea. Police practitioners having been pushing “crime prevention through environmental design” or CPTED for many years. This, to me, reads like a play on the concept of “Broken Windows” policing, as proposed by Kelling and Wilson in an article in a 1982 edition of “The Atlantic” regarding keeping and maintaining clean and safe neighborhoods.

    Where I am not positive is the concept is generally deployable in existing neighborhoods before they deteriorate but this Houston area neighborhood is already problematic. This may help keep criminals from the outside, out, but what about those already residing there?

  2. GUMDROPS & RAINBOWS FOR SURE.

    While we are at it, lets all hold hands and sing “we are the world”.

    I just certain the street scum and predators really give a rat’s ass about trees.

    • Thought that too Ron, till I recalled an experiment carried out by some Buddhist monks in crime ridden area in LA.
      They planted a couple hundred tree in an area, cared for them, prayed over them and waited.
      Over the next 2 years the violent crime rate dropped off by about 20%.
      The reason proved to be simple and is now used in mental health wards. GREEN, as in the colour of trees, has a calming effect upon the human brain.

        • No, sorry GI.
          I heard about it as part of a study back in the 90s that was done about colour therapy as a means of reducing violence in mental institutions.
          Two colours have that effect, pink and green.
          You may find some reference in the stories about when Buddhist monks & devotees did a huge week long prayer session in the bay area of California I think?
          Cops were left scratching their heads because the violent crime rate went down.
          I’ll see what I can dig up.

  3. Desperate to find something to knock?? Does it matter if crime doesn’t go down? Only to the increasingly stupid on JW. Tragic how this once admirable site has fallen into irrelevancy. Guess the calibre of subscribers is the reason.

  4. Many areas of the country have high-rise office buildings, and high-rise apartment buildings where the rich and infamous live behind high walls and extra security….and few trees.

    This pointing to trees, squirrels, birds, and a whole passel of other things as *reasons* for crime, is so the real **reasons** won’t have to be named.

  5. Working-class Houston Suburb Tries a Beautiful Way to Fight Crime, but With an Ugly Edge
    …………………………………….

    There are lots of trees here in Oakland, California–a place in fact named for oak trees. I *wish* trees alone would bring down the crime rate…

    • Gainesville, FL, is called “the City of Trees.” Lots and lots everywhere .In the rich areas and poor areas alike.
      Yet, the city has its share of crime.

        • the drug dealers find a lot of shade under which to make their ugly trade…even with many small children present. Not to mention the shootings that take place among the oaks, pines and azalea blooms.

  6. The only way that more trees will decrease crime is by “crowding out” the criminals.

  7. When or if the shooting does start at least the people will have something to hide behind.

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