Is Apartment Living Safe in Houston?

Apartment living is not safe in Houston. Apartment dwellers are subject to corrupt apartment managers, theft by maintenance, negligence in hiring in apartments, crime from inside and outside the apartment.

Since I sold my home where I resided for thirty years, I have lived in apartments. It is the most dehumanizing and horrible experience that anyone has created. I lived in apartments when I was a student. I was never burglarized.  My personal belongings were never stolen by anyone. There was a different mentality then. I have been painfully made aware of that difference with weekly and almost daily burglaries of my apartment. When I first moved to Houston, I lived in the in the Clear Lake area. This was a predominately white area. There did not appear to be any crime. There were no burglaries. Maintenance did not steal from tenants as is done in the inner city. In the inner city, theft by maintenance is condoned by the managers of the complex who send maintenance into tenants apartments. This allows them to steal. One tenant told me the manager told her that she had men living with her because she had men’s clothing in her home. Management had maintenance ransacking her home when she was at work. There are other incidents of abuse by management. For example, one tenant told me that she went to the store and found that management had been in her apartment with a key and they did not knock or have a maintenance order when they entered her apartment. They did not enter for an inspection. She was never notified of an inspection. Management appears to be spying on the tenant. She would never have known that management had visited if her male friend had not been visiting. He was in the bedroom and there was no knock or doorbell ring before management entered her apartment. When I lived in a home in Houston, the home was not burglarized. Tenants in the home did steal.  They were related to the landlord. Crime in the inner city is the issue. When I lived in apartments, crime was rampart. Tenants would warn you not to let people see that you had bought something. Someone was going to break in and steal your property as soon as you would leave for any reason. Gone were the days when you could trust neighbors to look out for you. The neighbors would be the ones to steal from you. When one tenant robbed you or burglarized your home, the word would get out. Other tenants would visit your home and steal like you were the new “Walmart’.  I filed some lawsuits and a new criminal emerged. Legal opponents hired private detectives and criminals to break into my home and steal my legal files and sabotage me. This is a new terror that I had never experienced before. I now have evidence that the police and prosecutors hire crooks or send undercover police to terrorize you by stealing your property. From my legal cases, all of my money, property, books, clothes and shoes and personal items were stolen. My car was regularly burglarized and my items were stolen. My safety deposit box at Capitol One Bank was robbed of all my legal files and records. Filing lawsuits brought out a new criminal that I had never experienced before. Attorneys began to complain about the behavior of legal opponents. One woman told me that she felt her husband who was a lawyer was killed. When she went to court to look at the records after his death, all of the records had been altered. These dangers are exacerbated by the involvement of management in the criminal activity of their employees. The managers know their maintenance staff is stealing. There is no key control. Keys are being sold in apartment complexes by maintenance and management. Tenants are not safe. The apartments do not have much protection. The doors can be opened with a credit card. Management will not change keys after burglaries. They insist on your paying for the change in the lock. Burglaries are occurring with keys. There is no forced entry. When you pay for the lock and secure your property so that you are no longer victimized, management will no longer rent to you. This happened to me in one apartment. When I got tired of daily burglaries, I changed locks regularly and put locks on my bedroom doors because people were entering my apartment when I was asleep evidenced by the fact that my keys to my car were broken upon waking. My trunk of my car could not be opened. The key had been broken in the lock. If I had not had an extra key in my purse, I would have been in a mess. Burglars destroy your life or sense of security by stealing your personal and financial records and identification. These burglaries make you feel insecure and violated. They tend to take your feeling of safety in your home away. Managers participate and know of the burglaries and do not protect tenants. Tenants are loose with the codes and allow strangers into the complex who put tenants at risk. I have come to the conclusion that living in apartments in Houston is too dangerous in some areas. The police do not protect you. When I learned that some tenants were committing the burglaries of my home, I filed complaints and the people were never arrested even though they admitted to the burglaries when confronted. The police announced they were not investigating burglaries in Houston as they were not considered violent crimes. Now tenants are being raped in apartments. One woman was raped by a tenant in the complex. The rapist would not have been caught if she had not told her daughter to call the police in Arabic. Women are not safe. One woman was found dead with her toddler in the apartment. Apartments in Houston are not safe because to the policy of the police not to prosecute burglaries in Houston. This needs to change. The one place we need to be safe is in our home.