>> Plus the added "security" of the front desk... Makes it feel more secure.

For me, there's also the fact that you are one unit out of very many within the hotel. Even if someone is going to be bold enough to break into a hotel room in the more "public environment", the odds are fairly low you'd be the victim from a pool of hundreds of rooms. Your stay is also brief, so you don't have a routine schedule a would-be criminal has time to study. Plus there's typically not going to be much worth stealing out of a hotel room anyway (wide screen TV, computers, etc).

I've always felt fairly safe in large apartment/condo buildings. I've never lived on the ground floor, so it feels like the odds of someone entering the building (or climbing the outside), coming to my floor, and choosing my specific unit to break into are quite low. You're very unlikely to be targeted by outside strangers; and there is a much smaller pool of people who live in the building capable of targeting you.

Three years ago I moved into an apartment with a street-level door. Basically a neighbourhood of townhouse-like buildings. It's been almost two years since I was burglarized while at work. I still don't sleep well anymore, with the ever-present feeling of dread that a nighttime home invasion is coming any day now. I can't leave the apartment for longer than 30 minutes at a time without expecting to come home to another completed burglary. I can't afford to move yet, but I can't wait for the day I go back to doubling my current rent to live in a higher class, 100+ dwelling building.

I will probably never buy a house. As I get older and save for a down payment, I'm sure it will be for a condo. I don't care for condo associations with their politics and fees, and the fact you only own or semi-own a section of an entire building. But I would never feel safe in a house where I have only a single door sitting between myself and my things, and an entire city full of parasitic people.

Shouldn't an entire suburb full of houses identical to your own yield the same peace of mind? Do you think being separated by walls instead of air makes a difference mentally?

If you sit in a parked car in front of a multi-dwelling building, you only see people walk into and out of the building's front door. You don't get to see which internal unit each person lives in. It doesn't help you to know that I live at 123 Random Street and am not home from 8am-6pm if you don't know that I live in Unit #456. You'd have to first pick me out from the crowd, and then actually follow me into the building to find out which unit I live in.

It's much easier to case a location that is directly accessible from the street. And easier to break into a door or window for that location, rather than entering a building and then breaking down a door in a hallway with frequent foot traffic.

When you're on the ground floor you are more likely to be targeted than when you're on the 40th floor.

Have you ever been burglarized by someone unknown and uncaught? The violation is extremely personal. These people watch you for days or weeks to ensure they know your routine. They know when you leave for work, and when you come home. They know you don't work Fridays.

It could be a neighbour you've said hello to dozens of times, watching from their window. It could be a stranger who finds it worthwhile to sit in their car watching your home. You'll never know.

Either way, they've invested time in observing you, and have specifically chosen you as their target. Yes, it makes you "targeted". When you come home to your back door broken open, and find $5000 worth of shit missing, and every drawer in your home opened and sifted through? When you can't possibly even know exactly what's missing. A month after the incident, you're still finding new things that were taken from you.

It's not just about the stolen property. It's your entire personal space ripped apart. It's a form of psychological rape. Hope you get to experience that some day.

I've been there, and it sucks. I ended up sleeping with a loaded 12-gauge shotgun under my bed. Neighbor of mine nailed a burglar with a 38, kept under her pillow.

I still sleep with a knife under my matress. Canadian, so no gun. If I had one, it'd be within reach.

> It's a form of psychological rape. Hope you get to experience that some day.

Wow.

I can understand why you might feel emotional about a robbery. I imagine it's very invasive.

Given that, I cannot imagine why you would wish it on someone else.

My point was that it's an irrational fear: you're likely not going to get robbed and it's not worth spending a bunch of time worry about it.

>> you're likely not going to get robbed

You realize I posted as someone who has been through that? "Likely not going to get robbed" doesn't apply, as it's already happened. And if it happens to have been one of my neighbours who committed the crime? Great, next time they see a large box delivered to my place, they know I'm ripe for another round.

I don't really want to compare being burglarized to sexual rape, as obviously the latter is much more damaging. But would you even dare telling a woman that was raped once that she's being irrational because she's terrified every time a man walks 5 steps behind her on the street?

Do I really want you to have to experience it? No. That was a reactionary remark for making light of a victim's mental state.

> But would you even dare telling a woman that was raped once that she's being irrational because she's terrified every time a man walks 5 steps behind her on the street?

Yes. It is irrational, because the likelihood of rape from a random stranger is actually extremely low.

I'm not disputing the pain of your experience. It likely was very traumatic.

However, just because something was very painful doesn't mean it's rational to live your life in fear of it happening (when its probability is low). I likewise recognize that being the victim of a terrorist attack is traumatic, but it would still be irrational to avoid planes for that reason.

> Yes. It is irrational, because the likelihood of rape from a random stranger is actually extremely low.

This is when averaged across the entire population. A 14 year old girl walking through a "bad neighbourhood" alone at night doesn't necessary carry the same risk of rape that a 6-foot tall, bulky body builder does.

Something can be irrational and psychologically painful at the same time. Fear of flying vs nonfear of driving, for example.

I'm going to guess you've never been burglarized.

I have not either, but every single person I know who's had their home invaded is a fair bit more nervous about that sort of thing than people who haven't.

A coworker of mine had his apartment burglarized by someone who got to the roof of his building and squeezed in through the tiny bathroom window of his top floor apartment approx 8 months ago. I don't think he's gotten over it yet.

My parents are the same way, they grew up in the city, and between them have 3 different stories of being burgled, and even when they moved to a very quiet, extremely low crime (as in basically zero, aside from DUIs and the occasional marijuana arrest) rural neighborhood, still lock their doors at night.