Melissa Farmer often walks her dog through Gompers Park on Chicago’s northwest side. She has some thoughts on crime and homelessness.

“This park is gorgeous. People don't know about it,” she said, walking along a lagoon on a recent morning. “I want to keep my fingers crossed that people continue not to.”

In the last year, though, a homeless encampment moved in. In that time, Farmer said she has seen people steal bikes, sell drugs, and burn fires. Now, she carries pepper spray. She has complained to police, the city’s parks department and her alderman.

“They're like, ‘you're basically stuck with them,’ which is infuriating,” Farmer said. “I don't personally understand how we can't say, like, ‘hey, you can't live in the park.’”

Many people across the country share Farmer’s concerns. As more people end up living in parks and under viaducts nationwide, residents and politicians in the communities around them have increasingly seen encampments as a threat to public safety.

It has become a major talking point in the race for governor in Washington state and in San Francisco’s mayoral race. A speaker at the Republican National Convention spoke of drug deals and “filthy tents” on her block in Pittsburgh. Before the Democratic National Convention, city officials in Chicago built a fence to deter an encampment there in the name of public safety.

And in a recent Supreme Court decision allowing cities to prosecute people for sleeping outside, a lead attorney spoke of dangerous encampments causing spikes in violent crime.

But how much do homeless encampments really affect crime in communities?

The Challenge of Separating Crime From Homelessness in a System That Criminalizes the Unhoused

Homeless people are more likely to have a criminal record, but researchers caution it’s difficult to disentangle cause and effect.

For example, people who have been incarcerated may find it harder to get a job or housing, which in turn makes them more likely to end up homeless. What’s more, laws banning panhandling or sleeping in public can make run-ins with police more likely.

“A lot of that is just that the crime itself is due to the nature of being homeless,” said Nyssa Snow-Hill, an assistant professor at DePaul University.

Read the full article about the reality of crime and homelessness by Meg Anderson at NPR.