It is absolutely not worth it.

Beyond all the negative safety and customer facing concerns…

I owned my old location for 10 years, about 5 years after we occupied it a large homeless population moved into the wood nearby. Mind you, i have no issue with them living in the woods. What then proceeded was a constant stream of theft (they stole our entire power feed of the side of our building), one weekend they cut our backflow valve off our water line and just left the water running all weekend. Then they would break into our trailers. I had to hire full time security and his stories of the nights there were wild. We moved, spent 2 x the money on an area that wouldn’t allow this type of nonsense to persist and we are so much better off.

The benefit you have is knowing this up front so you can avoid this area.

If it was free it’s still a bad idea

Don’t do it.

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I don’t care what people tell you. Even if it was legal to put an electric fence you’d still have issues.

Location Location Location. Just don’t.

Look out in the country.

Mistake, employees will start to leave.

You will be fighting this fight 24/7 365 as long as you own the building.

If it goes to hell and you have too many claims, your insurance company will drop you.

Any new insurance company will charge you up the ying-yang, if you can even find it. No insurance companies don’t want to take on guaranteed loses.

Just the absolute worst idea in the world to buy that building.

Sounds a lot like Mass and Cass in Boston. I wouldn’t want to rent any commercial property in an area like that, let alone buy it.

I personally wouldn’t do this.

If you do, factor in costs for security, fence/property repairs, vandalism, etc.

The last company I was employed with was on a shared property with a consignment store (like a big thrift store). It was also near a homeless camp/tent city type area, and the vandalism was insane. The homeless would come over with wire/bolt cutters at night, cut through the chain link fence on an almost nightly basis. They’d steal property, the homeless (or just generic criminals) once brought over a plasma cutter and cut through a steel shipping container door. They would steal propane tanks (the entire cage of like 16 tanks), others would graffiti the building and shipping containers. They hired night security, once the security was assaulted by like 6+ homeless/criminals and nearly killed. Some of the other security were just bad, asleep on the job, or the homeless/criminals would come and they’d just watch them from inside the car and call 911, but usually too late to matter, apprehension weren’t made.

No matter how you slice it, it’s a risk. Maybe your area isn’t as bad, maybe the homeless/criminals are better behaved, or the area is better policed, but just factor in the potential for damage and theft and vandalism. Plus customers will be more nervous about going into a “bad area” especially if hauling expensive goods, or large amounts of cash.

You seem to be trying to justify it - putting up trail cams - despite all of those who have experience and say don’t do it. So I’ll add mine to the list. My office is in an area of Phoenix where homelessness has been going up, luckily our customers don’t come to the office, they’re in other parts of the country.

However the women on my team have been harassed by homeless guys numerous time - flashing them, asking for sex, asking for $, walking around naked, crapping on the sidewalk. I’ve had to call 911 several times due to people having medical emergencies in the parking lot or having mental breakdowns and screaming at people.

It is 6:15 PM right now and I’m leaving my office, do you know why? Because it’s getting dark and even as a guy its not safe. As a business owner it sucks having to worry about the safety of your team, and having team say they’re nervous to come to work. My lease is up, so we’re moving. IMO your absolutely call crazy if you’re going to consider putting a business in an area like what you described. Do you really want to have an office where you have to pay for security? It’s already hard to find good team members, you’ll make it a lot harder if they’re in an area that they don’t feel safe, same for customers. I think it would be a horrible decision to invest significant money in such a location.

This is a bad idea. There is this ‘pastor’ in downtown that converted an apartment building to a homeless shelter. It’s a literal sty. Routinely shut down by the city for code violations. Lots of vagrants always around. Drugs, fighting, prostitution. Friend bought a condo in a neighboring building. Tried to persuade her against it. But they touted fenced secure parking. Code to front door of bldg. All the security and amenities.

It was terrible. Homeless would slip in as parking gate was open. Her car was broken into multiple times inside the secured parking area. Literally every time she did a ‘quick’ park job on street in front of bldg her car was broken into. They’d Break code lock on front door so the door wouldn’t lock. Drug use and aggressive behavior inside her ‘secure’ bldg.

Don’t do it. It’s no way to treat your employees.

Don’t bring business into this area unless it’s like a factory, or a business where clients doesn’t have to come. You want me to pick my gifts and wins in a freaking hood?🤣 someone as well just want to enjoy it instead of me lololol

If you are going to set up your business there, you should rent instead of buy it.

I worked for a place that did that. There’s a break-even point where the cheap space becomes worth the cost of security, but 14,000 sqft isn’t it.

They had over 300,000 square feet and several dozen armed guards, but it still wasn’t any sort of bargain and eventually they closed.

Even if the property is free, it’s not worth the effort or the security costs, and bad areas are much more dangerous than they used to be. 20 years ago, someone might get robbed. Now there are routine drive-bys with automatic weapons.

You can easily find 14K SqFt somewhere that’s cheap and merely inconvenient, but won’t scare off the customers.

TL/DR: “Don’t do it”