Sunday 26 July 2020

How 'Compound' Neighborhoods Work

Looking at the Seattle, Portland, LA, and San Francisco environment....homelessness....drug activity....police defunding...it's difficult to see the current home situation continuing 'as is'.  In ten to twenty years, it wouldn't surprise if new neighborhood rise up out of the 'ashes', and become compound neighborhoods like you see in South Africa.

The way these work?

You leave the main road and go down a street where a guard post exists....typically with two or three armed guys. Behind the gate will be two jeep-like vehicles with two guys in each vehicle.....heavily armed.

You flash your entry badge and the gate rises.  You go down the guarded street to your home....feeling safe and secure.  You enter the home to find a gun locker near the front-door. 

The regional laws are written in a way that should anyone cross the wire and enter the area....the guard crews can react with deadly force. 

In South Africa, this is the accepted form of security.  You as the resident....pay the neighborhood 'company' to survey the fence-line, monitor cameras, and control entry to the neighborhood.  The police?  They are not part of your security, and generally.....there's enough laws to make them more or less....the clean-up crew after the private security folks have done the job necessary.

All of this is coming to the west coast and probably Minneapolis....over the next twenty years.  People will laugh about the first big secure neighborhood put up and the crew hired to protect people and property.  But eventually.....everyone who makes 'real' money....will buy into such neighborhoods.

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