Back in late September, when my bank stocks began to tank — slowly, then all at once, as Hemingway described going broke — another wall in my life began to crack, as rumors of break-ins rattled my peaceful neighborhood in Allentown, Pa. The first indication that something was going on was the Crime Watch sign that suddenly appeared on the utility pole a block from my house.

To see what was happening, my husband and I attended a neighborhood-watch meeting in October at the nearby Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, where people suggested that crime was moving into our beautiful old neighborhood because the police were putting the squeeze on criminal activity downtown. A former city councilwoman sobbed as she told us how her home was broken into while she slept. An elderly man described how thieves ransacked his house in broad daylight. Some people were roving around different areas, stripping cars, the police liaison there told us, but evidently our stretched department could spare only three squad cars for the whole West End. We left feeling as if we’d have to batten down the hatches while the police tried to make it so uncomfortable for the drug gangs downtown that they’d move on. We signed up to be informed of future meetings and took the card of a local locksmith.

We live in a big old house with an open back porch and a three-tiered yard with trees. A year ago, I loved the fact that we were so open, that neighborhood kids and animals could play and hide here. But after that meeting, I began to see access points, places where we were vulnerable. “We have five doors,” I told my husband. “And the windows are a joke. The cat knows how to open them.”

Meanwhile, the financial news kept getting bleaker. A lawyer friend’s real estate and bankruptcy practice morphed into a plain bankruptcy practice. I’d always heard that crime increases when the economy goes down, and I found myself thinking of some of my grandparents’ stories about the Great Depression: people breaking the law out of desperation.