2005/06/15 Council Agenda Packet

The City of Whittier, California, in a study of the impacts of adult establishments found higher turnover rates in commercial and residential areas adjacent to adult uses. The study also compared 38 types of criminal activity over two time periods, showing a total increase of 102 percent for the study area containing adult businesses, while the city as a whole had only an eight percent increase. A study by the City of Austin, Texas, compared areas with adult businesses to other areas containing similar land uses but no adult businesses, and found a sex crimes rate between two and five times greater in the areas with adult businesses. The study also showed that the sex-related crime rate was 66 percent higher in areas having two or more adult businesses than in those areas having only one such business. Phoenix, Arizona, studied the relationship between arrests for sex crimes and the locations of adult businesses, and found an overall increase of six times the sex crime rate in the study areas with adult uses over the control areas without such uses. The State of Minnesota reported that a study conducted in that state examining the effects . of sexually -oriented businesses upon property values and crime rates indicated that such businesses had a strong negative impact on the crime rate. The addition of one sexually - oriented business to a census tract area caused an increase in the overall crime rate index in that area by more than nine percent. In another state study, it was determined that there was a statistically significant correlation between the location of adult businesses and neighborhood deterioration. Housing values were significantly lower in an area with three adult businesses than in an area with only one adult business. Also, there was a significantly higher crime rate associated with two adult businesses in an area than was associated with only one adult business in an area. Many other cities currently regulate adult uses differently from other commercial uses and several of these are discussed later in this study. Most often, these regulations disperse such uses rather than concentrating them in any particular area of the munici- pality and may also exclude them from certain areas. For example, Los Angeles, California. generally prohibits new adult uses from locating within a certain distance of another such use. Los Angeles enacted its dispersal zoning after a study concluded that the concentration of adult uses had negative impacts on criminal activity, property values, and public perceptions of the quality of life. E VER00095 iv