Fear Thy Neighbor? Coping With Living In A Bad Neighborhood
You’ll probably have had dreams of moving to a nice suburb and living that suburban lifestyle with your family and nice weekends, but for a lot of people, in order to get onto the property ladder, you’ve got to aim a bit lower in your expectations.
This can mean that when we are trying to buy a property, we end up picking one that’s affordable which could mean that it’s in a bad neighborhood.
But what can we all do to make sure that if we are moving to a bad neighborhood that we protect ourselves and our family?
Contents
Have A Proper Security System
If your neighborhood is subject to break-ins a security system is a common-sense line of defense. If you live in a bad neighborhood, unfortunately, police protection can be quite low on the priority list.
This is why it’s crucial for you to have a security system in place. As well as this, you need to make sure you’ve got a robust insurance policy should the worst-case scenario happen.
If you ever come back from work to find that you’ve suffered a break-in, it is peace of mind to know that the insurance company will appoint a locksmith and get the property back to a secure position.
Get To Know Your Neighbors
In an ideal world, we could knock on our neighbor’s door and introduce ourselves, but not every neighbor is the friendly type.
Getting to know your neighbors is about understanding if they are nice or the polar opposite.
But you have to remember that if you want them to be nice to you you’ve got to be nice to them.
If you live in a neighborhood where there are good people but they are few and far between, make sure that you all work together so you can start to build a support network.
Don’t Make Your Home A Target
The vast majority of criminals don’t plan their crimes too well.
A lot of them purely look for the easiest target and if you have numerous red flags you’ve got to make sure that your property is protected in the right way but also start to have some common sense with the items you leave in plain sight.
For example, make sure that you don’t leave valuables in your car when you park overnight. Also, make sure that the windows don’t provide an insight into the property.
If people can walk past and see directly into your living room you’ve got to find ways to put up a barrier between yourself and the world.
You should also think about adding more lights outside the property as this will draw attention to the property if it suffers a break-in.
It’s also a good idea to be street smart, especially when you’re on your own at night.
Learn the good and bad areas of the neighborhoods, especially if there are gangs hanging out on a certain corner.
And you will need to find out what they wear but also make sure that you avoid them, possibly by taking the long route home.
It’s never easy living in a bad neighborhood but you can make sure that you can protect yourself and your family.
