I live in what seems to be a normal neighborhood, though it has more multi-family apartment/condo buildings than single family homes. There seem to be plenty of kids around.
Yet in 10 years, not once has a kid rang my doorbell for treats on Halloween. I’m in a pretty small building – 4 units and there is a bell for each unit at the front door. Theoretically kids could score 4 treats in the same time it would take to ring a bell in a single family home.
Is there some rule that trick or treating is only to be done for single family homes?
Or a perception that places where it’s more likely that families with children live will be more welcoming/generous/safer than blocks of flats with an unknown quantity of grumpy single people like me?
I think there’s something about apartments where having to buzz in and then figure out which of the apartments might be giving out candy seems like too much work, or possibly intimidating.
My building was like that when I moved in. It’s a little larger, but there weren’t a lot of trick-or-treaters, and there seemed to be a feeling that at least some residents would have liked more.
So I put a sign up sheet in the lobby, about the 1/3 of the units signed up to give out candy. We put a jaunty, Halloween-themed list on the front door with a list of the apartments giving candy, and leave the front door propped open during trick-or-treat hours. (Come rob us!) Now we have more trick-or-treaters.
My wife and I live in a single-family house along a major town road. We buy candy every year, and usually end up giving it to the church because, in the 14 years that I’ve lived here, we have yet to have a trick-or-treater knock.
Put a pumpkin by your door.
With houses, you can easily tell if someone’s not home or not participating, as the universal signal for that is to simply have the lights off. Lights on, and maybe some decorations? Pretty good bet they are entertaining trick or treaters. With apartment buildings, depending on the layout you can’t always easily tell that. Plus there’s more shady characters living in apartments (not exempting myself).
Last year I got a memo from my apartment complex that if I wanted to participate in giving out candy, they had little doohickeys you could hang on the door to indicate such. That’s probably the best way to handle it.