Addressing Homelessness on Your Business Property

A lack of affordable housing and effective safety nets increase homeless populations in major cities. While we all feel compassion for transients looking for safe places to sleep and eat, there is no doubt of their impact on business properties. Panhandling and trespassing individuals put employees and customers ill at ease and leave them vulnerable to crime. A patrolling security service in Mohave County, AZ can help you control transient traffic on your business property, along with other efforts. Here are six tips on addressing homelessness around your business:

  • Install additional lights and cameras: Lighting and security cameras deter criminal activity, and they also work to prevent trespassers. Install motion sensor lights in the dark corners around your property, including eaves, doorways and dumpsters. The lights remove hiding places. Security cameras catch criminal activity if it occurs on business grounds, and with improved lighting, you capture better quality video. Often, the existence of these measures is enough to keep homeless individuals away, but at the very least, you can secure sufficient evidence to press charges.
  • Control loitering: This is an ideal job for security staff. If people hang around your doors or under overhangs for too long, security officers can ask them to move along. Besides lurking individuals, loitering also leads to trash accumulation and possessions left behind for storage. Your security service in Mohave County, AZ can spot these habits as they occur and address them before it becomes a problem.
  • Do not engage: Never comfort homeless individuals. People become homeless for many reasons, and while most of them are harmless, there are dangerous people. A break from reality due to a mental condition or drug or alcohol impairment may turn a person violent. Leave it to your security officers to ask them to leave. Also, do not give them food or money, as that will keep them coming back. Instead, network with community resources that help the homeless access food, shelter and needed resources.
  • Lock up: Press upon employees to lock up and arm security systems before leaving for the day. If your business has a gate, lock it too. Besides locking up your primary business location, lock dumpsters, exterior power outlets and water spigots. If you cannot lock up fixtures, remove the handles and knobs. Move outdoor storage inside or into a locking garage. If that cannot work, lock those units. Making your property secure also deters camps and loitering.
  • Post rules: Establish rules about prohibitions on your property and post them. Standard rules include nighttime curfews and bans on alcohol or drug use, loitering, camping and sleeping. Include a statement that violating the rules results in a call to law enforcement. Patrolling security services will make these rules more effective.
  • Hire security services: If you retain patrolling security service during business hours and at night, you will create a safer atmosphere. Employees and customers no longer have to worry about confrontation, and you no longer have to deal with trash or graffiti. If there are incidents, your security officer can file the police report and offer details, rather than have that job fall to you or an employee.

Mohave Security LHC offers patrolling security services for businesses throughout Mohave County, AZ. Call us today if you need security service to address transient issues on your property.

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