Criminal behavior often is a symptom of mental illness
Police officers often come equipped with guns, bullet proof vests, radio access to help and have partners to back them up.
Often property management staff and Landlords take risks and have been threatened, yelled at, harassed, and endangered with none of these protections (ex: Leo Teskey’s beating of landlord Dougald Miller which left him in a vegetative state )
An informal survey I recently did of site managers found that almost 100% had at one time in their career threatened, intimidated, stalked, or (as in one case) assaulted during their performing their job duties.
Edmonton’s crime rate has doubled in the last year. Criminals have to find a place to live, often the tenants who rent apartments qualify, yet they’re teenage sons/daughters belong in gangs or they have family members or boyfriends/girlfriends who are mentally ill and violent.
More protections for Property Management professionals should be in place to protect those individuals often visiting and in charge of dealing with those very criminals Police officers consider dangerous. This is both the responsibility and duty of the landlord to provide these protections. Failure to do so could be cause for liability issues, increase in insurance claims and stigmatizing your property. A stigmatized property has an increase in vacancy and property damage. The loss of income far exceeds the cost of creating policies and procedures for safety and protections of both tenants and staff.
Neighboring tenants often live in fear as well, afraid to volunteer information as these criminals know where they live.
More security measures mean spending more money to protect the "community" i.e. other apartment dwellers. Which translate to rising costs of rents to pay for it as well as more hands on involvement by the police and landlords.
Understanding criminal behavior and taking steps to eliminate can increase your property value in less than 90 days.
Edmonton has the “Crime Free” program which has helped some landlords. However, as an incentive for landlords to adhere to the program a hugely understaffed and underfunded program has become too rigid. Most landlords struggling to keep up with the demands of the job have put the Crime Free program as something “good to have” but not high on the priority.
Later I will be exploring different aspects of crime and solutions used to resolve these issues.
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