I'm in your nearby neighborhood, too, and I think it totally varies. We've never had any packages disappear off our porch. We keeps some simple furniture, some tools (shovel, broom, icemelt) and put out pumpkins some years, and none of that has been a problem. We also have friend pick up things off our porch that we put out in a bag with their name on it (things like dishes left after a potluck, for instance).
But our color-changing LED light-bulb was stolen out of our porch fixture once, and one year we had c-9 Christmas lights (the cabana-party style with the screw in bulbs) strung at the outer edge of our yard, and some kids (our downstairs neighbors saw them and aged them to be about 9 - 11 years old) took bulbs out one or two at a time, until one day they stripped them all out.
Our immediate neighbor has had potted plants stolen off her steps and even had some flowers *dug out of the ground* and stolen.
My reading is that there are/were some kids in the area hostile about new-comers and expressing themselves though casual vandalism. Our lights are gaudy even by Somerville standards... they're a few degrees to the left of the kind of thing others do (giant rainbows, palm trees, that sort of thing). The color-changing LED, and the annuals of our neighbor, I think, marked us as not belonging to the 'hood.
If you're further over by Bay State or the park, I think you have a fairly different 'hood, though. A block or two changes things.
Anyway, we've never had any serious, determined theft, just casual vandalism kind. And I think it comes and goes with a few kids here and there. One year all the teens and pre-teens seem to be a really good crop and they're out there helping shovel the walks. And another year, annoying stuff happens for a while, and then it stops. Hard to say in the end.
Welcome!
We've never had any packages disappear off our porch. We keeps some simple furniture, some tools (shovel, broom, icemelt) and put out pumpkins some years, and none of that has been a problem. We also have friend pick up things off our porch that we put out in a bag with their name on it (things like dishes left after a potluck, for instance).
But our color-changing LED light-bulb was stolen out of our porch fixture once, and one year we had c-9 Christmas lights (the cabana-party style with the screw in bulbs) strung at the outer edge of our yard, and some kids (our downstairs neighbors saw them and aged them to be about 9 - 11 years old) took bulbs out one or two at a time, until one day they stripped them all out.
Our immediate neighbor has had potted plants stolen off her steps and even had some flowers *dug out of the ground* and stolen.
My reading is that there are/were some kids in the area hostile about new-comers and expressing themselves though casual vandalism. Our lights are gaudy even by Somerville standards... they're a few degrees to the left of the kind of thing others do (giant rainbows, palm trees, that sort of thing). The color-changing LED, and the annuals of our neighbor, I think, marked us as not belonging to the 'hood.
If you're further over by Bay State or the park, I think you have a fairly different 'hood, though. A block or two changes things.
Anyway, we've never had any serious, determined theft, just casual vandalism kind. And I think it comes and goes with a few kids here and there. One year all the teens and pre-teens seem to be a really good crop and they're out there helping shovel the walks. And another year, annoying stuff happens for a while, and then it stops. Hard to say in the end.