[hanamizu]

Their houses are like fortresses. With bars and shutters.

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That’s been my experience in both Mexico and Costa Rica (and I assume the rest of Latin America). The houses are built to keep outsiders out. Fences and high walls topped with razor wire or (old school) broken glass set in concrete. Bars on all the windows and no way to even reach the front door without going through a locked metal gate.

American homes must look like very easy pickings to criminals from these countries.

[woodbutcher1963]

My wife and I have been watching a lot of videos of houses/apartments in Italy. Almost all the homes have bars at least on the first floor. In addition, they have shutters built into the windows that can be closed from the inside. All of these houses are literally made out of stone. So, some of them date back hundreds of years where IF you didn’t have a house like this you were literally dead.

[Bon of Babble]

I’m seeing this going up all over in my California neighborhood - high privacy fences around properties with cameras pointed out on each corner, locked gates even to enter the front yard, security systems, of course (which are being disabled by thieves).

I am lucky to live in a neighborhood full of either retirees or people who work from home.