“But there were two more hopeful causes and both pointed to the fundamental role communities had in transforming New York. First, immigration. First- and second-generation immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes than the native born, and hundreds of thousands of them had been moving into at-risk neighborhoods, diluting the percentage of criminals. And many were there because of the second reason, the Housing Initiative that replaced urban entropy with homes. “What happened,” says Trina Scotland of the East Brooklyn Congregations, “was that as the mind-set changed, and as the police changed, that’s when the crime rate started going down.” A Melrose Court resident in the”