FYI a photo montage of the huge increase in secure gated communities

Bill Masen - August 25, 2021

Here is an insight into how many mainly middle class types are responding to increases in anxiety over their families security.  Whilst the silly rich go the  Bunker/ Iceberg home/ Private Island or Retreat route, this is how many middle classes go.    I recently read that over 40% of all new build developments in the US are now Gated or Secure communities.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/may/05/for-your-protection-gated-cities-around-the-world-in-pictures

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I took a walk through a 1-2 year old neighborhood this week and noticed something interesting. About 8/10 of the houses had these white security cameras or camera doorbells installed around their house. A friend of mine also had moved into a newly constructed house lately and it came with security cameras and Google home compatible devices already installed. The older neighborhood that I live in hasn’t adopted these new technologies.

Seems to me that in addition to these new gated communities, many middle class people are implementing WiFi cloud based security cameras.

 

Yes its rather clever how they can view their homes on their smart phones be they at work, driving, on vacation etc. its a good security scheme. 

 

what’s really nice about the camera doorbells is when the visitor ring goes thru to a phone call >> common today is the day burglar checking out the at-home situation first – no way for him to know the difference unless told …. 

 

Years ago, when I lived in California earthquake country, I lived in a mobile home park of about 200 homes. There was a creaky metal gate that that was closed at night, and a person needed a magnetic card or to punch a code into a keypad to get the gate to open. I asked the management company representative, “What happens if the power goes out when the gate is closed?” The response was, “Oh, the gate is easy enough to lift off its tracks. A couple of people together could do it.”

I thought to myself, this is not good in an earthquake scenario where potentially the tracks or gate could get mangled, and it might not be possible to lift the gate off the tracks. Plus, this mobile home park has lots of elderly and disabled people. I’m not sure we could find a couple of people quickly willing and able to lift the gate off the tracks, especially if a fire had started. 

So I’m not a fan of electrically operated gates, and I don’t plan to live in a gated community if I can help it.

 

I think if you are going to invest in gated property it needs one with security / maintence staff.

 

That is a good point about getting stuck within the gated communities that are there to protect you. After an earthquake where the track and gate get mangled like you said, if a fire sweeps through the mobile home park and people are trapped in there, it could get very scary.

 

not many gated communities round my way, I know of only 1 possibly 2.

however there is an increase in people owning second homes, which pushes up the price for locals .

 

They aren’t common where I live either. I am sure that with a gate, comes a heavy handed HOA that many preppers would not be too keen to involve themselves with.

 

Unless the whole place is a prepper community 🙂

 

Oh boy! Just imagining an entire gated prepper community and thinking what that would look like.

Gun ranges on every block, lots of camo, American flags in every yard, every house has a wood stove and greenhouse… Guess I shouldn’t judge and blast out stereotypes though because this site has taught me that people from every walk of life are getting into prepping.

 

Har Har 🙂     now I think a community of hard core preppers would be hard to distinguish from other neighbourhoods unless you look pretty hard.

Stuff like semi concealled ham radio antennas popping up here and there, a lot more Vegatable plots, fewer flags or anything even slightly contencious, lots of very discrete looking (no bling or stickers) vehicles but mechanically top notch with large fuel tanks. Lots of very polite and attentative neighbours etc.  and I guess lots of people with CCW permits. 🙂