The Chicago study examines the degree to which open-market considerations were apparently related to the locational decisions of the municipal government. It then determines the effect of new public housing on the levels of social disorganization in the targeted communities and the ensuing effects on the delinquency rates. Evidence indicates that political dynamics can directly affect the level of social disorganization in a community, thereby indirectly affecting the delinquency level. The model provides no support for the assumption that public housing projects might attract more crime-prone populations than the existing residents. Instead, it introduced a new source of instability into the neighborhood that decreased the community's ability to regulate itself. The key to integrating conflict theories into social disorganization theories is to recognize that the internal dynamics of neighborhoods, which are regarded solely as independent variables in conventional social disorganization models, are themselves affected by political decisionmaking. 3 tables.