Many Charlotte neighborhood leaders have voiced frustration with boarded-up housing and neglected property in their communities.
Conventional wisdom and the "broken window" theory of crime holds that run-down homes are not only eyesores, they beget crime. No wonder then that community activists from Helping Empower Local People have identified such problems as a top concern in 2007.
Below is a list of area neighborhoods in which more than one out of every 20 houses or apartments received code violations in a year. The number following the neighborhood name represents the percentage of housing units with code violations.
Smallwood -- 18.4
Druid Hills South -- 12.9
Druid Hills North -- 9.0
Lakewood -- 8.4
Washington Heights -- 8.2
Villa Heights -- 6.9
Biddleville -- 6.3
Wilson Heights -- 5.7
Lockwood -- 5.5