One of the first jobs I got out of school was working in the Justice Court in Reno. All manner of crimes went through our building. One that really impressed me at the time was a young man, maybe 18-22 years old, who had looted some self storage facilities. Over a few months, he had broken into perhaps dozens of storage units, nobody was really sure how many, and trucked away other people’s possessions. He drove off with people’s property past gates and cameras and on-site managers and he did it over and over again. How did this young master mind defeat all the storage security systems? He rented a unit!
Renting a self storage unit is like putting your stuff in a gated community. You expect the gates, the cameras and the on-site staff to spot any strangers who do not belong and chase them off before they can do any mischief. Why don’t you worry about your neighbors? Because houses in gated communities are so expensive that people with the means to buy them generally do not need to steal other people’s personal property to make ends meet.
Thus, the price of the house is inherently selective on who your neighbors might be; you only worry about the strangers. That does not happen in self storage communities. The Oregon State Penitentiary may keep a particularly troubling inmate under disciplinary segregation. At most storage facilities, that person can come in the day he is released and, if he can sign his name and hand over a month’s rent (or $1, depending on the promotions), rent a unit, get an access code for the gate, drive in and out past cameras without anybody caring, and put his hands on another customer’s door. All he has to do is defeat the lock and he is ready to load.
At Wilsonville SelfStorage, we have the cameras, the gate and the on-site personnel. Because we are a small facility with relatively low turnover of customers, and ...
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May 14th, 2012
