BEHIND THE GATE : Walling Off the Neighborhood Is a Growing Trend

The Rolling Hills subdivision in Laguna Niguel, a comfortable enclave of $500,000 tract homes, is a place where young professionals can raise families in quiet seclusion from the frenetic pace of south Orange County.

But the residents, not satisfied with the privacy that comes from their many limited-access cul-de-sac streets, are taking steps to surround the 315-home subdivision with fences and electronic gates.

“I think it will make it more safe here,” Linda Kishi, a 28-year-old housewife, said through the front door that she declined to open for a Times reporter. “It will, you know, keep out strangers--like you.”

A Proliferation

Across Southern California, more and more communities, condominium complexes and apartments are building gates to try to seal out the pressures and dangers of the outside world.

In Orange County, a full one-third of the 140 new developments under way during 1988 featured security gates, according to Residential Trends, a Costa Mesa publication that charts real estate trends in Southern California.

In 1983, by contrast, the publication’s survey found that only 15% of the county’s new developments were being gated.

Access Controls of Burbank, Southern California’s largest maker and installer of the devices, has been selling 35 to 40 security gates per month in Southern California. Company officials said they have a backlog of up to five weeks, with the biggest demand coming from south Orange County.

Security Factor

Gates are not new, of course. But where they were once the mainstay of the very rich, gates today are not restricted to upscale neighborhoods.

Although many feel snob appeal is fueling the gating frenzy, industry officials say the major force behind the boom is the public’s desire for more security. Having a fence around their neighborhood makes people think they have locked crime out, although police studies and recent crimes--including the recent kidnaping of a Huntington Beach child from a gated complex--dispute that.

But whatever the reason, security gates are translating into speedier house sales--and more money--for real estate developers.

“It’s an amenity that all homeowners seem to enjoy,” said Brian Theriot, director of investor relations for J. M. Peters Co., one of the area’s largest builders of expensive homes. “Rather than being an extra trimming on the Christmas tree, as it used to be, it is now part of the tree.”

Brian Weinstock, president of Weinstock Construction in Studio City, said the homes he builds in gated communities often sell out before development is completed, while non-gated homes take as long as 60 days to sell.

First Question

“The first question out of their (buyers’) mouth is whether there is a gated community,” said Weinstock, whose company builds primarily in the San Fernando Valley. Weinstock estimated that there are 100 gated communities in the Valley, compared to almost none 10 years ago.

Weinstock added that the Southern California housing market slowed over the summer but that demand is still strong for homes in gated communities.

“The demand is there on a 3-to-1 basis for a gated community (over) not living in a gated community,” Weinstock said.

Although it costs about $80,000 to gate a community, Weinstock said, he can make his money back by selling the homes faster.

A house in a closed community generally sells within 30 days, compared to two months for houses in non-gated neighborhoods, Weinstock said. The quicker turnover means an added $3,000 profit per house from the interest saved on the outstanding construction loan, he said.

Police Statistics

While many security analysts agree that gates do deter many criminals, police studies show that they by no means create an absolutely safe environment.

Police in Irvine and Newport Beach conducted separate studies several years ago that showed the property crime rate in gated communities was comparable to the burglary rate in similar non-gated communities.

California Secretary of State March Fong Eu was robbed and savagely attacked in a November, 1986, break-in at her home in a gated and guarded community in Los Angeles’ Hancock Park. Police speculated that the intruder, who was later caught and convicted, scaled a wall surrounding the community.

And, last weekend, a 12-year-old girl was kidnaped from her home inside Sea Cliff on the Greens, a condominium complex in Huntington Beach that is ringed with walls and patrolled by a private security force. The girl was raped, then pushed nude from her abductor’s truck about a mile from her home, Huntington Beach police said. They said a suspect arrested in the case had recently worked on construction inside the complex.

Dropping Their Guard

Gates are easily circumvented, said security consultant Bruce Ramm, a former Orange police officer. Once inside, Ramm said, criminals often find a populace lulled into a false sense of security. Front doors are left unlocked and Neighborhood Watch programs don’t exist because residents don’t believe criminals would dare come in after them.

“Just because you have gates doesn’t mean nothing is going to happen,” Ramm said. “Your front door should be your gate.”

Another security problem in gated communities is something of a Catch-22. Police officers responding to an emergency call sometimes find their access impeded by the gates.

Communities with automated gates are required to provide emergency access codes to police and fire officials and must maintain a “crash gate” that officials can drive through, if necessary. But police say they sometimes can’t get in because they are not kept up to date on the access codes. They also say there are delays even if everything is working according to plan.

“You still have to stop and get the gate open,” Irvine Police Sgt. Phil Povey said.

Deterrent Value

Officials in the gate-security business agree that gates do not eliminate crime, but they maintain that gates--especially guarded gates--are a deterrent.

“First of all, burglars for the most part don’t go in on a skateboard. They go in driving something,” said Jack Smith, former operations manager for Saddleback Security Systems in Mission Viejo, which deploys guards at several gated communities. “In order to get vehicles in, they have to go through a gate. And if challenged by a guard, that’s a real deterrent. It’s not Checkpoint Charlie, but the last thing a crook wants is to be identified.”

Gates may not solve the entire problem, “but you’ll solve 80% to 90%,” added Ed Pyle, sales manager for Trans Meridien Systems in Northridge, a gate manufacturer. “If they can eliminate the biggest percentage of your problem, then that’s good.”

Security aside, there is also an element of “snob appeal,” said Mark Baldassare, associate professor of social ecology at UC Irvine. “People are constantly striving for ways to differentiate themselves from the middle class,” Baldassare said. “To say you live in a gated community is a way of saying you earn enough money to separate yourself from the masses.”

Sense of Community

Gated subdivisions also offer a heightened “sense of community,” said Joel Singer, executive vice president of the California Assn. of Realtors. A feeling of closeness exists, Singer said, because residents are responsible for upkeep of their streets and lighting, by virtue of their community’s private status. They pay for the maintenance through homeowners’ association dues or higher rents.

Gates also save taxpayers money because local government agencies do not have to maintain the streets inside. Local government planners, consequently, eagerly allow developers to put up gates--as long as they do not impede the traffic flow through the area and do not generate too many objections from neighboring residents.

The downside for homeowners behind the gates is that they must pay to maintain streets and gates. In Laguna Niguel’s Rolling Hills subdivision, for example, residents pay $20 more in monthly association fees, in addition to a one-time payment of $400, for the gates.

There is also the matter of liability. The community can be sued for problems involving its roads.

Pay for Privilege

“If you want the privilege to live in a gated community, you have to pay for it,” an Orange County planner said. “Some people are aware of what happens when they live there, but others are surprised once they get in and find out the excess cost.”

That surprise sometimes turns to anger when residents find that for all their money the gates don’t even work. Gate malfunctions are so widespread that Trea Sparrow, vice president of Irvine-based Mercury Management--which manages 250 Southern California homeowners’ associations--said she could not think of one that has not had problems.

“They are just a big headache,” Sparrow said.

In San Pedro, the 152-unit Baywatch Townhomes Assn. has had a security gate for six years. Residents of the community overlooking Los Angeles Harbor complain that they have had problems with the gate almost the entire time, especially in hot summer months, when the gate motor burns out.

“Some months it’s been down half the time,” said Ed Coyle, the association’s former president. But, he added, “we still feel it’s worth it. Even though it is sometimes open, it’s closed enough of the time that casual vandals can’t come in.”