Young Women Live in Apartments, Despite What Broadview Ads Suggest

I recently came across this hilarious SNL Broadview security commercial. The commentary is great and highlights an important reality that these ads skirt: "Are you a single woman living in a 5 person house?" The answer in most cases is no, for both single men and women.

Where do most burglaries happen? In cities, not suburbs. What type of housing is most prevalent in cities? Apartments.

So many of our customers, male and female, have called us, after realizing that they cannot get a good price on a traditional hardwired security system for an apartment. The $30-40/ month monitoring fees and 3 year contracts just don't make sense for them.

What's fascinating about Broadview security ads is that they that tap into a large shared horror film narrative we all have about being alone, in the woods, in a big house.

A missing story that needs to be told is the everyday apartment theft and apartment building burglaries. We recently had a property manager call us to help him secure his building at he had 6 burglaries with the doors smashed down in the space of 1 month. His residents were of course feeling very unsafe.

For me, it's a lot scarier to think about being robbed, while 300+ neighbors are near me, but completely unaware or uninterested. A group of staff writers at the St. Petersburg Times, a Florida newspaper, looked into crime trends in Tampa's suburbs vs. city center. They aptly point out that people move to the suburbs to get away from crime. Tampa Bay robberies are found in the high density apartment buildings in the city and are less frequent in the suburban areas.

We have done some of our own research and found that many cities have much higher crime indexes than the national average of 320.9 per 100,000 residents. Here are some cities that surprised us with crime rates that are unusually high.

City & Crime Index
Austin, TX - 435.3
Bakersfield, CA - 439.2
Charlotte, NC - 589.2
Colorado Springs, CO - 392.6
Jacksonville, FL - 574.9
Lexington, KY - 455.9
Mesa, AZ - 332.1
Phoenix, AZ - 482.1
Portland, OR - 439.7
Raleigh, NC - 342.0
Seattle, WA - 440.3

SimpliSafe's wireless security system, ensures you feel safe, get professional alarm monitoring, and works for all our customers - from the family that needs to protect a home in the suburbs, to the young professional that needs security in the city.