Keeping Our Home & Neighborhood Safer

From blog article published at: http://www.teamvosf.com/blog/keeping-your-home-and-neighborhood-safe

rWe just attended a meeting with our Sanchez, Pond and Prosper neighbors in the San Francisco Eureka Valley area, coordinated with the SF Mission District police and Supervisor Mandelman. They had some great advice for helping us make our blocks safer.

It was good to hear that we were already following many of their suggestions, but there were some great new ideas that we hadn’t considered.

The tips below are critical, especially if your property is vacant while you’re selling it. Criminals see and know what’s going on in their area.

8 Great Tips

1. Recruit everyone on your block — even if you make your home safe and others don’t follow suit, criminals will come. So, they suggested getting everyone on your block onboard, before you take next steps. Assign a team captain to go door-to-door and ask neighbors to sign up, get their email addresses and set up a group email for ongoing communications. Your district police department, along with your district supervisors, also have active programs to help you work with your neighbors and public buildings. Be sure to contact them.
2. Keep lights on at night inside your home, garage and at your porch/doors. Sounds logical, but many of our neighbors hadn’t been turning on their lights, even though they had them installed. Others had lights on their porch, but not in front of their garages.
3. Use timers and motion detectors to turn on lights — this will help you make sure that the lights go on, and also give the appearance that someone is home to turn the lights on and off.​
4. Don’t cover all your windows — it may seem logical to make sure people can’t see inside, but for upper floors and units, you actually want them to see your lights and hear activity. Criminals shy away from active areas.
5. Install video cameras — even if they are fake ones. Criminals know to look for them, and avoid homes that have them. Costco and Amazon have a number of great security cameras, like Ring, Avertx, Blink, or Arlo, and there are several lower cost ones. Here’s one example of a fake camera from Amazon.
6. Keep the front of your home tidy — trim your trees and shrubs, etc. Criminals are looking for areas that seem unattended and in disarray. They just feel more comfortable there.
7. If your home is vacant during a sale, be sure to visit it or have your agent do so at least 1–2x per week. Criminals keep close tabs on their area, and definitely know when your property is vacant. So, keep them on their toes.
8. Remove graffiti immediately — the police explained that graffiti is one way that criminals mark their territory. If you leave it, they’ll definitely come back. Don’t give them the opportunity to claim your property.