If you live in a gated apartment complex, do you live in a "gated community"?

[Snake Alchemist]

Seems like the popular thing nowadays is to issue a card or key fob to allow you access.

[HockeyMom]

1. You are issued a sticker for your car, but

each person has an ID #which you can use to key in your number for the gates to open. BTW, Trayvon's father LIVED in that complex. He would have given his son his ID number to get inside.

[Snake Alchemist]

2. That was not an apartment complex. nt

[ScreamingMeemie]

3. It is, however, a community of connected townhomes, that look very much like apartments.

In my opinion, this gated community is more like the gated apartment complexes I see than the "gated community" (think large homes on lots) that are surrounding me here in Houston. It's a glorified apartment complex. Which is also why I think the dispatcher calls it that on the Zimmerman 911 call. Note how Zimmerman corrects him. Google map it.

[Snake Alchemist]

4. That brings up even more questions.

Is a gated series of townhomes a "gated community"?

[ScreamingMeemie]

5. Personally I think any group of homes, connected or unconnected, surrounded by a gate

that one needs a code/key or gatehouse clearance to access is a gated community. Trailer parks, apartment complexes, co-ops, vacation villas...any of them are communities. If they are gated, they are gated communities. I think it sounds nicer (in real estate terms) instead of saying "24 hour on site security". It's kind of like how quaint or charming means small in RE speak.

[zipplewrath]

7. Less secure

An odd study done by our local news rag suggested that gated communities were actually "less safe". I'm not ready to claim it was true, but some of the statistics sure put the value of them into question. The problem was suggested that it is a bit like hanging out a target. "Valuable stuff in here". Added to it was that unless there was an actual person at the gate, they kept out practically no one, except in essence the police which tended to never patrol unless they were called.

[Atypical Liberal]

8. I figure if you live in a place that needs gates

...it's not very pleasant anyway.

It's like going through a neighborhood and seeing bars on the windows.

Might be very secure, but it's a pretty good indication that the neighborhood isn't.

[LibDemAlways]

9. Even when there is an actual person at the gate, a gated community

isn't secure. Once someone gets by the gatekeeper, all bets are off.

[zipplewrath]

10. Study suggested otherwise

Again, it was a newspaper "study" so it tends towards the "anecdotal" but there was a noticable difference between tended gates, and automatic gates. Why that was so wasn't necessarily determined.

[LibDemAlways]

14. Automatic gates are a joke. All someone has to do is follow another car in.

As for the guards, they routinely admit construction workers, dog groomers, pool guys, lesson givers, cleaning crews, gardeners, friends of residents, delivery services - in other words a huge assortment of people - most of whom are, no doubt, honest. However, my sister in law lived in one such gated community and crime - particularly property crime - was a real problem. People are paying for the illusion of security.

[left on green only]

11. Perhaps the ultimate "gated communities" in our society are

our federal prisons; and that being said, it is usually safe to say that anyone who lives in a gated community, deserves to. What gets me is the way that the people who live in them go around telling every one they do with their noses up in the air as if to proclaim that they are better than you. Yes, the real estate vultures are the ones who have propagated this disease....I mean myth.

[Marrah_G]

6. I live in a secured building

You can't get in without a key or being buzzed in. I thought most apartment complexes were like that. The parking lots are not gated, although they do issue you stickers for each car, but I don't think anyone ever checks the cars.

[FarCenter]

12. It looks like it could be gated for auto traffic, but not pedestrian traffic

See "Retreat View Circle, Sanford, FL" in google maps.

The north entrance is either ungated or the gates are up. The east entrance gate arms are either down or the gate arms are up and there are shadows across the road.

There appears to be no effective barrier to pedestrians, either at the gates or between buildings at the northwest and southwest corners of the condo complex.

There are listings in the complex for $95K to $120K on various web sites. Google "Retreat at Twin Lakes, Sanford, FL".

Lennar was the builder, after the first builder could not complete it. High magnification views in Bing maps show the early street and bare ground layout.

[Trillo]

13. Not sure. It may depend more upon your actions than the actual physical limitations.

Lets say you live in a facility where there are two entrances, the outer locked community door, and presumably an inner one for which you have a key, your locked personal door. Thus, if non-community people drop by your place, they are stopped by the community door, as well as your personal door.

Do you give the same consideration to others not in your community who only have one entrance or door? Do you drop by their places and knock on their single front door? Or do you instead stop at the apartment complex's unlocked entrance, the "outer entrance", as if you couldn't get through, and call them, or perhaps put a note there saying you dropped by if they're not there?

If you give the same consideration to others that you require of them when they drop by your place, then, no, you do not live in a gated community, it's just a place where you live. If you do not give the same consideration to others that you require of others when they come to your place, then, yes, you live in a "gated community".

Hopefully that carries some meaning in relation to your question.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

15. I live in behind a gate out in the twigs

Keeps the OHV riders and campers away and the local kitties hungrier

[dionysus]

16. depends, actually. i lived in NY in a complex that was owned by people who had tons of these in FLA.

their policy was to install a gate at all their properties.

1) they never closed the gate
2) even if they closed the gate, which they didn't, you could walk around it. there was no fence surrounding the property...