I really struggle to understand the purpose of gated communities. As a workmen type dude who has regularly had to go into these places, every time I'm stuck at a gate calling someone to open up, without fail someone else waiting behind me will buzz me in no questions asked. Also usually nothing stopping you from walking around the gate, sure you can't bring a car in, but other than that nothing stopping you.

Gated communities and Homeowners Associations were originally invented to keep black and hispanic people out. Simple as that. They are still used as tools of segregation from a paranoid populace.

I lived in a gated community from age 11 through moving out for college and it's BS. All it does is make it difficult for people to visit. And I suppose you have to pay for an HOA but I was a kid and didn't know about all that. My neighborhood was pretty diverse though.

What would it take for this annotation to be reversed?

Not much.

Spent the first half of my life in Tulsa. If the complex or neighborhood isn't gated, then at least everyone has fences. Assumed it was like that everywhere.

Move to Chicago and not only are gated areas really rare, nobody has fences! Weird.

Now I'm in the South and nothing is gated, fences maybe, maybe not. We don't even have curbs down here, forget sidewalks, not even in the bougie suburb and nice neighborhoods.

As a cable guy in Tulsa, we all knew how to get into any gated area. We knew loads of codes and some where predictable, MMYY, 1125 this month. Also, if you have ladders on top of your truck and wear a tool belt, you become invisible.

Anyone read Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler? I read it earlier this year, and it kinda nailed how people in gated communities view the outside world (in the novel it's mostly justified but...). It's fantastic, go read it.

The closest shooting to me in town has been a naked guy running around the gated community next door, who shot a neighbor.

I'd be willing to bet if you actually checked for white collar crime, most gated communities have a far higher crime rate than open neighborhoods of the same affluence.