In a study conducted by the Census Bureau's 2001 American Housing Survey, it claims that it is not just the rich and arrogant who seek to reside behind gates, but the "desire to lock out the outside world cuts across all income groups." This is nothing more than a sad attempt to ease the consciences of the rich and spoiled.

According to the study, among the top reasons why people desire to live behind gates are security, a sense of community, protecting the value of homes, privacy, protection from crime and it also has a lot to do with nostalgia, the going trends and expectations of society.

The analysis of a sampling of 62,000 households that is representative of the nation's 119 million households, shows that:

· More than 7 million households - about 6% of the national total - are in developments behind walls and fences. About 4 million of that total are in communities where access is controlled by gates, entry codes, key cards or security guards.

· Homeowners in gated communities live in upscale and mostly white developments. But renters, who are more ethnically diverse and less affluent, are nearly 21/2 times as likely as homeowners to live behind gates or walls.

· Whether they own or rent, Hispanics are more likely to live in such communities than whites or blacks. That may be partly because there is a large Hispanic population in the West and Southwest, areas with the largest concentration of gated communities.

· Affluent African-American homeowners are less likely to live in gated communities than whites and Hispanics, even in metro areas such as Atlanta and Washington, D.C., which have a large black middle class. Experts theorize that after centuries of exclusion, blacks may be reluctant to embrace such a lifestyle or to live in predominantly white developments.

Here is an idea. Instead of building gated communities, why not fence up Texas for either the entire criminal element or all neat and tidy paranoid suburbanites. If the reason behind the gated community is to escape crime and or to feel secure, then why not deal with the crime instead of running from it. On the other hand if the idea is to rebuild the community sprit, why not start where we live now.

Source from: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-12-15-gated-usat_x.htm

© 2003 by CR Hamilton