In response to recent high crime rates in off-campus housing ­— according to data from the Baton Rouge Police Department — and College of Agriculture president Brad Frazier being robbed at gun point at his off-campus apartment last summer, a new Student Government initiative called the Gold Standard Student Housing Program is being developed.
The program, which hopes to announce its first Gold Standard complexes this upcoming January, is the first of its kind across the nation. It’s a partnership among SG, the East Baton Rouge District Attorney’s office, LSUPD, BRPD and property management from various off-campus complexes, SG president Zack Faircloth said.
The Gold Standard Student Housing Program aims to be a proactive initiative to reduce crime and raise awareness of crime-stopping efforts for everyone at off-campus complexes, according to the SG website.
“We got to talking to the DA’s office a little more, specifically their crime strategies unit,” Faircloth said. “They do what’s called calls-per-unit analysis on apartment complexes so they can look and see. If it’s got 100 units and they get 100 calls from the particular property in a year, they’ve got one call-per-unit.”
A typical motel in other cities across the nation operates at around 0.2 calls-per-unit per year, Faircloth said. He went on to explain that there are off-campus complexes which operate at 0.8 to 0.9 calls-per-unit per year.
From January 2015 to June 2016, 1,411 crimes were reported to BRPD from popular off-campus housing locations, which included 493 thefts, 328 vehicle burglaries, 204 residential burglaries, 170 batteries, 79 non-residential burglaries, 50 individual robberies, 43 miscellaneous crimes, 38 cases of assault and six homicides, according to data provided by BRPD and analyzed by SG director of transportation Chuck Mock. These calls amounted to about 11 percent of all calls to BRPD during the 18-month period.
“Our timeline looks like probably the next three or four months we’re going to spend fleshing out a budget and getting our ducks in a row in terms of who those properties are going to be that want to be a part of the list,” Faircloth said. “As soon as that happens, we’ve got a couple of trainings identified, and we’re looking to bring on a couple of full-time coordinators whose job will be to handle these off-campus surveys.”
Each complex looking to opt in to the program will have a “crime prevention through environmental design,” CPTED, survey done on the property to make sure that, by design, it is safe and that the complex is taking proper security measures, Faircloth said.
The CPTED survey is conducted through an LSUPD online portal, meaning LSUPD can access the results and determine if they meet qualifications to be considered “Gold Standard,” SG presidential press secretary Jayce Genco said.
“It is my hope that by August that portal will be opened up to all properties [and] we will have two full-time coordinators whose job it is to do these surveys at no extra expense at all to the students,” Faircloth said.
Once the portal launches in August, the two surveyors will spend August through December surveying the properties while the DA’s office continues to monitor the numbers on the back end of the calls-per-unit analysis, Faircloth said.
Should everything go according to SG’s plan, Faircloth hopes the first announcement of Gold Standard Housing complexes will come out in January.
“We know this is a legacy item, we know I’m never going to get to live in a Gold Standard Housing complex, but that’s OK,” Faircloth said. “Our goal for this is that those calls-per-unit drop drastically, that … crime isn’t as prominent as it is right now and one day students and parents can feel really comfortable living at some of these off-campus complexes.”