The Effects Of Arson

In the last century, the crime of illegally burning down buildings, and collecting a false claim from an insurance agency has exploded onto the scene. This act is extremely dangerous, and is an illegal felony. Over the course of 50 years’ arson became a major fad of property owners as an option to escape their financial crisis. Arson is all over the United States and has been around for a long time; it is extremely dangerous but makes the most economic sense to owners with high home owners insurance, since laws are going in effect to increase cost while not increasing revenue.
Arson is the crime of intentionally burning down a building. There are multiple reasons as to why somebody would commit this crime. In most of these situations the owner

Ever since home owner’s insurance has been around, the incentive to burn down the house is there. In the United States, “From 1951 to 1977 the number of arson incidents reported by local fire departments across the United States to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) increased by over 3,100 percent, from 5,600 cases to over 177,000 cases” (Brady 4) There was a massive spike throughout the 26 years, a 3100% is an incredibly large increase in amount of occurrences. Humans were having people burn down their houses at an alarmingly high rate, which is extremely unsafe for people living around the areas, and destroying

In states like New York and California there are a lot of cities where rent is controlled at a steady rate to make sure that people living on the poverty line can afford a place to live. Whereas in the downtown New York, the competition is so strong that if there was not rent control, the prices controlled by the market demand would be extremely high. Now this isn’t totally a bad thing, rent control has good and bad qualities that economist has been fighting for over 50 years. In an article about rent control in San Francisco "Karnilowicz estimated that 5 percent of the city’s 212,000 rental units (about 10,600) are kept vacant by landlords who would rather not deal with rent control (others estimate the number is higher, about 25,000 units).” (James 1) Having land owners lose out on revenue, and limit their ability to breakeven/profit in their renting business, is what lead most owners to commit this crime. When it is easier and more profitable to burn their own property down, than to have tenants, there is a major problem in the