Study: strongest predictor of being pulled over in a census tract

[Chris Mason]

...owner occupancy.

This is from [page 68 of their 353 page study](https://sparq.stanford.edu/opd-reports) which was about something non-real estate related.

They were studying something off-topic for this discussion forum, but something found in the data is quite relevant to us.

What was being measured here is the frequency of traffic stops in census tracts. They had a massive data set thanks to Oakland Police Department being under federal oversight and thus required to cough up data to any researcher that asks for it.

These are the census tract characteristics that one might think influences police interference in the lives of residents. They controlled for all of these in their study:

The following are statistically significant. For those that don't recall their social science stat class from college, "statistical significance" is used to distinguish a correlation that could be random chance (I can roll fair dice twice, and get snake eyes twice in a row, due to dumb luck) from one that is (in this case >99.9% certain) not dumb luck (eg, snake eyes 100 times in a row probably means loaded dice).

• Violent crime rate in census tract.
• Owner occupied housing units. 
• Run down neighborhood. 

Violent crime and run down neighborhood are not surprising, but owner occupied housing units kind of surprised me. Of all the variables measured, both statistically significant and statistically insignificant, owner occupied housing units had the strongest measurable impact. Meaning that the % of neighbors that are owner occupants has a stronger impact on the probability of you being pulled over, stopped, frisked, etc, than anything else herein measured. 

Each real estate transaction is a one-off unique situation, of course, but the take-away for me is that this gives (additional) reason to believe that if one wants long-term tenants, a rental property in a neighborhood that consists mostly owner occupied residents (eg, this is one of the few rental properties in the neighborhood) might on average be a slightly better bet holding constant everything else. If we suppose that tenants who don't constantly see cop cars rolling through, looking for minor traffic violations to justify a stops/searches/etc of people, are more likely to sign on for another year, of course (the bulk of the data here is officer-initiated traffic stops for minor traffic offenses... and let's be real, who doesn't roll through a stop sign once in a while, or go 5 mph over the limit?). It appears that cops engage in such "it's not a quota, I promise" behavior, in Oakland at least, in census tracts where mostly tenants live. 

For those that like to think speculatively, one thing one could speculate on is which direction owner occupancy in this neighborhood is likely to go over the next 10 years. If you think it's low now but will increase over time, great. If you think it's high now but other REI and landlords are likely to be taking over ownership of neighboring properties moving forward, not so great.