What are the top priorities for ensuring that you have established and can maintain a safe and secure home?

Safety:

When ensuring that you have established and can maintain a safe and secure home it is first important to make sure you have all of your safety items. Most importantly you need to constantly remember to lock your doors and make sure that they are always functional. Lighting is also key to ensure that your home is safe, porch lights can keep unwanted people away at night. It is also important to remember to have working smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, carbon monoxide detector, and a working security system. Another thing that many people might not think about is keeping a maintained yard, like cutting down dead trees to prevent property damage during storms.

Relationships:

Relationships are extremely important to ensure a safe and secure home. When you maintain strong relationships with your neighbors, they can not only help you but also become lifelong friends you can rely on. They can help you when you're locked out of your home, in case something happens, and they will look out for the whole neighborhood/ your home when you are out of town. It is also important to maintain strong relationships with your doorman and landlord. Your landlord can help you when you are locked out or with maintaining the safety of your home, and your doorman can help watch over you/ knows who is coming in and out of your building. Also, having good relationships with your roommate can help with safety as well.

Savings:

It is important to make sure that you stay on top of your savings. Save as much money as you can/ have a rainy-day fund (Barry Clancy). Also, always make sure to make payments on time to avoid missing your payments or having them add up over time. You should also continue to make sure that you have a cushion in your savings and checking account for emergencies so it doesn't hurt you in the money when you have to take unexpected money out.

Knowledge of environment:

When purchasing a new home, you should first take a look at the crime rates in the neighborhood that you want to live in. It is important to also know the safe pathways to walk on and safe places to park your car. This can lead into making sure that you constantly know your surroundings, you need to make sure that you know the route you need to take to get to your destination when walking home or while taking the CTA or bus. Make sure that when you walk around you are not looking at your cell phone, you need to look confident and strong so that they think that they can’t tip you over.

This page was developed from interviews with:

Marco Cain, Felix Clansy, Lee Fowles, Gordon Kennedy, Ingrid Percy, Dolly Nabokov, Barry Clancy, Ike Donleavy, Colin Miller, Cindy Adams, Kyle O’Brien, Tammy Lewis