The city of Midland, Texas, had 562 reported burglaries of a habitation in the year 2006. Using the 2005 number of 38,881 housing units, each such unit had about about a 1.4% chance of a burglary last year. But not all houses and neighborhoods are the same, however, and some are more susceptible than others.
I was strolling through the local blogs and ran across entries from Stew and JessicasWell about a recent city council vote denying the application for a new apartment complex because of objections from the people who would be neighbors to the new complex. (Read the newspaper report at Mywesttexas.com). The major reason for objection was that there was a documented higher than average crime rate around some local apartment complexes.
Not all apartments are the same, but some complexes have higher crime rates, and the surrounding neighborhoods suffer too. Someone suggested that the reason for the difference might be that some apartment managers were more discriminating about who they accept. Uh oh, there's the "d" word. Is it legal to have income requirements and do background checks for prospective renters?
Some of the citizens of this fair city are downright paranoid. I'm one of them. I'm currently in the process of trying to make my residence a little more secure than it has been. And although it won't keep someone from stealing from me, I've been documenting serial numbers from everything in the house that has one. It's a tiresome endeavor, and ideally it will have been a huge waste of time. But not everyone does this, and property that isn't marked or for which the owner hasn't recorded the serial number is for all practical purposes lost forever if it's stolen. And here's something that is frightening: Many gun owners haven't bothered to record the serial numbers of their guns.
If you haven't already guessed, I fall on the side of those people who want to keep their neighborhoods safe from crime. I certainly can't blame the prospective neighbors of that apartment complex for opposing it. Kudos to the City Council for recognizing the need to preserve an existing neighborhood. And the objecting residents would probably tell those who want them to make the sacrifice for the greater good, "You first."
And for the builders, keep in mind that the local industry is cyclical and has always had it's booms and busts. Remember all of those cliches: trees don't grow to the sky, what goes up must come down, and boom comes before bust. If someone says "it's different this time," recruit them as an investor and get the money up front.
Addendum: That 2006 burglary number was reported by the Crime Analysis Supervisor at a recent meeting between residents of a subdivision and members of the Midland Police Department. And the City of Midland website has a link to an always interesting and sometimes frightening crime map updated each week by the highly skilled people in the police department's Crime Analysis Section.
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