Monday, April 5, 2004 | 11:22 a.m.
Homeowners and renters who need keys or lock changes for their mailboxes soon will have to get them from their home builder or homeowners association instead of a post office, if the U.S. Postal Service has its way.
The Postal Service says it is making that change to save money. But critics say it will lead to less privacy and security in an age where mail theft is an easy route to identity theft.
The epicenter for the policy is Las Vegas and Henderson, where the Postal Service plans to enforce its rules that require clustered groups of mailboxes for numerous homes. Included in this policy, and particularly troublesome for some, is a requirement that the home builder or a homeowners association would keep the extra set of keys to the boxes and hand out replacement keys to new homeowners.
The Postal Service until now has kept the keys for single-family homes, but service spokesman Vic Fenimore said the policy has always been that a third party, such as a condominium or apartment management company, keep keys for the gangboxes.
"This is something that we've always done," he said. What's new is that mailbox clusters, also known as "gangboxes" or "collective box units" in Postal Service terminology, will be required for new subdivisions, and therefore somebody other than the Postal Service will have to be in charge of the keys, he said.
Metro Police Lt. Steve Franks said the policies could contribute to the identity-theft problems already plaguing Southern Nevada.
"Always, those gang mailboxes have been problems for us," he said. "It is one-stop shopping for mail and identity thieves."
Criminals searching individual mailboxes along a road will usually be spotted and turned in to police, he said. That's not so for the gangboxes, where a person in front of a bank of mailboxes can look like any other customer.
"They can walk up there, open it up and steal 30 people's mail," Franks said. "It's wholesale stealing."
He said the issue of the control of the keys adds new concern to the postal policy.
"Who's going to control the keys?" Franks asked.
And rental homes need to have the locks changed on mailboxes whenever a new tenant moves in to try to prevent identity theft.
With the mailboxes and keys under the control of the Postal Service, at least the matters are in the hands of a federal agency that has heightened security practices, law enforcers said.
The Federal Trade Commission in 2002 said Nevada is fourth worst in the nation for identity theft, with 85 victims per 100,000 people or a total of more than 1,700. But Franks said Metro's own figures put Nevada at the top of the list, perhaps because many people do not complain to the federal agency.
The Southern Nevada Home Builders Association and the National Association of Home Builders, also have issues with the new policy. Among the concerns is that it could add several hundred dollars to the average cost of a new home, they say.
But representatives with the local trade group say the bigger problem is that the builders would be responsible for the indefinite maintenance of the boxes, and in the absence of a designated homeowners association, the builder also would be in charge of the keys to the group mailboxes.
Irene Porter, the local group's executive director, said the industry's concern is for the security of the home buyer. She said the Postal Service's policy could have significant repercussions on the general public and the home building industry without open discussion or input.
"We have yet to find any federal backup for this policy," Porter said.
Julene Hayworth, a former aide to Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., turned government affairs specialist for the Southern Nevada Home Builder Association, said that the ultimate impact of the postal policy will be to make postal officials out of homeowners association leaders or federal agents out of builders.
"They don't want to be responsible for the keys," she said. "But you are still under federal law. Mail tampering is a federal, criminal law. You are asking homeowners associations and builders to be liable under federal law."
Another concern among home builders is that homeowners associations often have come into conflict with their residents, creating a potentially troubling situation when an association could have access to the private correspondence of a resident.
Hal Bloch, president of the Summerlin North Community Association, said homeowners' associations like his should not be forced into the postal business.
Bloch said the policy would cost an association money in the time an employee would have to spend dealing with mailbox issues.
"It will be an extra burden on the homeowners associations," Bloch said. "It's a relatively small thing, but we don't need any more little things."
Bloch said the situation could also leave a homeowners association in a precarious legal position, as they could be held responsible for missing mail.
"We theoretically would have access to all their mail," he said. "If someone's mail is missing they could say, 'You have the keys, you did it.' If we have no access we're out of that loop."
And Porter said the Postal Service also has indicated it will force older neighborhoods, even those without homeowners associations, to cluster their mailboxes. Porter asked: Without an association, and with the builder long gone, who would be in charge of the keys?
Fenimore said he is not aware of any effort to make the policy retroactive. He said he is sympathetic to the concerns expressed by law enforcement and home builders, but the Postal Service is transforming itself from a government agency to an independent company -- and it cannot afford to deliver to single homes.
Like government agencies throughout Southern Nevada, the Postal Service is having trouble keeping up with the population boom that creates a demand for more service, Fenimore said.
"We're looking at a situation with the growth out here unlike any place else," he said.
Fenimore said the security risk is overstated, since single mailboxes and the familiar blue common mailboxes for outgoing mail also are vulnerable to thieves.
He said postal regulations give the Postal Service latitude in implementing new policies.
"We have to think like a business," Fenimore said. "We have to do what's best for, on the one hand the public, but we have to be fiscally responsible."
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