In interviews and a Twitter poll, Denton students said they take price range into account more than crime when they search for student apartments in the city.
It’s rare, if not impossible, to find a residential area with no crime. For students living in Denton, two student apartment complexes are among the 10 residential blocks in the city with the most reported crimes.
The Denton Police Department provides the public with regular crime statistics in two crime datasets titled Denton Crime Data and Crime Data, which can be found on the city of Denton’s website. Using the data, the Denton Record-Chronicle found which blocks in the city with student apartments have seen the most amount of crimes reported.
All other larceny — which excludes things like shoplifting and burglaries from buildings other than homes and vehicles — is one of the top reported crimes at residences, and data shows that most of all other larceny reports happen at homes in the 200 block of Inman Street. The Forum at Denton Station Student Apartments is the only apartment complex in the 200 block. This block is also the student residential area that has had the most simple assaults reported.
In a Twitter poll conducted by a Record-Chronicle reporter for Denton students, 83.6% of 55 respondents said they care about a student apartment fitting their budget the most. About 9.1% said they cared more about fewer crimes being reported there and 7.3% said they take their friends’ recommendations into account more than budget or crime.
Matthew Garis, a senior at the University of North Texas, described himself as a struggling college student and said the cheap cost of living makes up for the threat of crime. Garis said he lives at The Ridge where he’s seen or heard more heated arguments and physical fights than he can count, knows of drug use (mostly marijuana) and of someone who was thrown off a third-floor balcony.
“Honestly, changing apartments wouldn’t matter much since other places have had instances of people breaking in to sexually assault females, other robberies and that dude with a frying pan and a cleaver that got killed by the police,” he said.
The same query found that the block with student apartments with the second most amount of all other larceny reports is the 1300 block of Scripture Street where CityParc is located, followed by the blocks where UC Denton Apartments and Gateway at Denton Apartments are located. The same query showed the most reported crime from the 2700 block of Colorado Boulevard (The Ridge Apartments) is destructive/damage/vandalism of property.
Annual reports from the 200 block Inman Street have stayed steady since 2010 with between 60 and 70 reports but dropped to their lowest in 2017 at 40. In total, there have been 96 other larceny-related reports out of the 613 total reports from homes here.
But this doesn’t mean The Forum is the residential block in Denton that sees the most crime reported. In the same query searching for crime, location name and public address, the 5300 block of East McKinney Street showed 132 reports of simple assault, 111 for destruction or vandalism and 84 for breaking and entering.
When you factor in misspellings of street names, this spot on McKinney Street has seen 817 reports from homes and 911 reports total. Callers in the 200 block Inman Street have made 613 reports from homes, and 704 total.
Higher education brought at least 57,237 students to Denton’s two universities in fall 2020, and some made Denton their home at one of the many off-campus housing options. For some students, like UNT sophomores Zauria Thomas and Olivia Wattman, feeling safe in their residential area is important, but it wasn’t their main priority in searching for housing.
“It honestly just depends on price,” Thomas said.
DENTON STUDENTS: When you're looking for a student apartment here, what do you care about the most?
I'd also appreciate any other thoughts. #dentonrc
— Zaira Perez (@zairalperez) February 8, 2021
Thomas lives off-campus but doesn’t reside in one of the student-focused apartments. She said she’s currently searching for a new place with price range and bugs — or lack thereof — being at the forefront in her search.
“I wish I could be one of those people where [lack of] safety bothers me, but coming where I come from, it’s fine,” she said.
Thomas said she hasn’t been the victim of a crime while living at her apartment on the northern side of the city, but she’s heard from friends of guns firing around The Forum and CastleRock.
“The ones I currently live in have police going 24/7 because of car break-ins and stuff like that,” she said.
Wattman lives at a residence hall at the University of North Texas and wants to move off-campus so she can live with her boyfriend. Proximity to campus is her priority and she’s trying to find a place to move into by May.
“I don’t drive, and I take the bus to work,” she said. “I texted my mom about it and she told me … to look at the crime rates. It’s important and it’ll factor into my budget, but at the same time, it’s not a big deal breaker. I know the general crime rates are a little up compared to normal, but my options are very limited already [since I don’t drive].”
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February 15, 2021 at 05:00AM
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