Before Signing That Lease, Do a Safety Check of the Complex

You are searching for a new apartment. You clip an ad and head off to see the building. Nice lobby, you think, and it’s convenient to public transportation.

You ask about amenities: pool, tennis court, fitness center and party room. You ask the location of the nearest shopping area, bank, restaurants.

You walk through the unit, checking its condition, views and square footage. You get information about the rent and other fees.

Isn’t there something missing from your list?

You forgot to ask about crime.

What you want to know is whether any crimes occurred at the complex in the last two to three years--murders, rapes, assaults, kidnappings, carjackings, robberies, drug busts, burglaries, vandalism to cars.

“Crime can occur anywhere--even in buildings in the best neighborhoods and highest rent districts,” said attorney John F. Kennedy of Silver Spring, Md. “You can ask specific questions of the leasing agent or management office person, and you should get very specific answers.

“By law, they do have to tell you--if you ask. If a leasing agent or management employee fails to answer or specifically gives you misleading or wrong answers with intent not to scare you away, they have committed a fraud and your rental contract will not be valid.”

If you move in and then hear about assaults in the building and become afraid, you are entitled to void the contract because it was a material misrepresentation, Kennedy said.

If you were to be assaulted in the building and there were previous attacks that you should have been told about, you can sue for fraud, personal injury and not being informed about a potential ongoing problem, Kennedy said.

But even if the building you choose is crime-free, something may occur in the future. Management has an obligation to tell residents as soon as feasible by putting fliers in hallways, under doors or front desk boxes, or by a notice on the house cable station so that tenants can be vigilant, he said.

Renters are more likely than owners to have their cars stolen or their homes burglarized, according to Jean O’Neil, director of research for the Washington, D.C.-based National Crime Prevention Council.

Here are a few statistics she cites from the Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey for 1999:

* Vehicles were stolen from 8.4 per 1,000 owned households versus 13 per 1,000 rented ones.

* Burglaries occurred at 26.5 per 1,000 owned households versus 48.9 per 1,000 rented ones.

* There were thefts from yards, halls and storage bins at 135.5 per 1,000 owned households versus 190 per 1,000 rented ones.

Owned households included single-family dwellings and condominiums, said O’Neil. Rented households included single-family dwellings and apartments.

You can make an apartment complex essentially as safe as a neighborhood of single-family homes, said O’Neil, but it takes extra effort to build a sense of community and mutual awareness.

Officer Steven Jackson, a crime-prevention specialist with the Washington, D.C., police department’s Community Outreach Section, offers the following tips for apartment dwellers.

* The front door of your unit should have a deadbolt lock and a peephole. A chain lock is not enough to keep out an intruder.

* A sliding glass door to a balcony should have a wooden rod in the track so it can’t be opened, and pins in the overhead frame so the door can’t be lifted out.

* Entry to the building should be tightly controlled. This could mean having a doorman or a safety officer who oversees people entering and leaving. It could be a lobby receptionist who beeps visitors in through a locked front door. Or it could be an electronic entrance system that lets you in with a code or card.

* Keys to your unit should be protected. Management will expect a set when you move in. Ask to be shown how they are secured and what process is in place when a key is needed to enter your unit in an emergency.

* Walkways, entrances, parking areas, elevators, hallways, stairways, laundry rooms and storage areas should be well lighted 24 hours a day.

* Mailboxes should be in a well-traveled, well-lighted area. Use only your last name on the box; do not indicate if you are a man or a woman, living alone or with others. Make sure the lock is sturdy.

* The door to the community laundry room should have a window. If it doesn’t, leave the door open at all times while you are there. Try to schedule visits during hours when others are at home.

* Don’t leave your unit door open when going to the laundry, picking up mail, taking out trash or waiting for a delivery.

* Employees and contract employees on the property and workers in units should wear ID provided by the apartment management, if they don’t already display a company badge.

* The door to a community storage facility should be kept locked. Tenants should not have keys except to their individual bins. The storage room door key should be kept at the front desk or in the office, and tenants should have to sign for it. The key should be available only when someone is in the office or at the desk.

* Telephones in elevators and in the garage should be tested regularly. Ask management how often that is done.

* Shrubs should be trimmed low at doorways throughout the complex and at the windows outside basement- or ground-level units. Is there enough room between the shrubs and the walls behind them for an intruder to hide until an appropriate time to break in? If so, consider removing the hedges.

* Trash and garbage bags should not be allowed to pile up; such things suggest to an intruder that no one cares about the property.

* Newspapers should not be allowed to pile up outside unit doors; they show no one is home.

* Last but not least, get to know your neighbors. One of the best ways is to volunteer to help management organize a social event.

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Barbara Burtoff welcomes comments and questions but cannot reply to each letter. You can e-mail her at BBapartmentlife@aol.com. Distributed by Inman News Features.