Lots of neighborhoods just don’t have that many kids left. They’ve grown. Easily 80% of my suburban neighborhood is over 65. And they’ve been here since the 90s.

When young families can’t buy homes their trick-or-treating becomes relegated to their apartment complex or (when those complexes are sketchy) to trunk or treats.

For my neighborhood it was the busiest I’ve ever seen it in 17 years. A lot of home made costumes, even teenagers dressing up and getting in on the action with the gaggles of little kids. A few houses even did mini haunted houses in the front yards and garages. A lot of other houses had people chilling in the driveways with a small fire going. It was in the 50s (F) so not particularly warm either… I’m in a lower to middle class area, no HOA neighborhood so people do what they want with decorating and it’s great.

No sidewalks. And nearby gated communities with sidewalks. Those communities are richer and setup tables outside. Two houses were handing out jello shots to the adults, one had a DJ and light show. My neighborhood still has some houses that do hand outs, but without a sidewalk most people drive up to each house, get out, knock, get back in, drive down to the next house, stop, get out, etc. Parents are worried their walkers will get run over. We can’t compete with the other neighborhoods So, in my opinion, communities built to only serve cars and not pedestrians is the problem.

There’s one area in my town a few blocks away that gets SLAMMED with trick or treaters. It’s got the highest density of nice houses. We’ll see about a dozen families as they make their way over to that neighborhood.

Over the years, people in my neighborhood haven’t bothered to pass out candy since nobody goes through here, which makes even less people go through here, and so on.

I wondered this year. Last year 60 bags were not enough. This year i have 30 left. I think a lot kids got older and don’t do it anymore (though the biggest groups were some teenage girls admiring my decoration, i do the most fancy one in my area as i have a long path to fill).

Unfortunately I am not sure if i will ever be able to do this again due to my health.

For years we’ve had almost no trick-or-treaters come to our house. We know there are tons in the area, but the number who actually stopped at our house kept dropping.

Last year it was warm enough on Halloween for us to leave the front door open, and we saw tons of kids walk past our house and heard one kid say, “That’s the creepy house.”

Which is ridiculous. There’s nothing creepy at all about our house.

Anyway, last year I decided I should make a sign to let the kids know they could stop at our house.

I made a post about the sign.

Anyway, the sign worked. We had double-digit trick-or-treaters this year.

Neighborhoods go through cycles. If all your neighbors have no school aged kids, you will see low turnout.

Our street only has 2 houses that do it, so everyone drives right on by our block. Some of them go to parties instead, some of them are just lazy and disinterested.

I’ve kind of shamed people into decorating for Christmas, I made my house elegantly lit with a warm white glow and theirs were dark and depressing. But Halloween, just the 2 of us for years.

We’re in a high crime city so a lot of folks do trunk-or-treats and I get that, but, those kids are gonna be adults that have to learn to live here too. There’s something humanizing about going up to strangers doors, finding out your neighbors aren’t actually monsters or assholes, but kind people.

Nobody seems to have mentioned this yet, but Trunk or Treat for lazy and/or helicopter parents has cannibalized door to door visits.

My wife I walked around our area in Los Angeles this year and many areas were completely full of trick or treating. Strangely though some of the most expensive neighborhoods had zero Halloween decorations and no activity.

We usually have several groups of families in our neighborhood. Our streets were packed this year, though. First Halloween in a while that wasn’t cold or raining or both.

Our neighborhood only has two entrance streets with a lot of connecting interior streets and cul de sacs which makes it a wee safer due to no through streets and less traffic.

Many families set up firepits in their driveways to hand out candy, sometimes with music playing or movies projected on garage doors, one house has a popcorn machine every year. This year several houses had buckets of mini shots for parents and a lot of others smelled like some dank vape. When we drank we used to bring a wagon with wine and cups to share with neighbors. It’s a really great time.

This year there was even an Inflatable Cupcake Castle of Doom.

Last year there was a haunted house set up so that at the end you were watching the next group on cameras and you controlled the puppets and stuff, very Jigsaw style. That house has always had an elaborate haunted house but couldn’t do it this year.

So…yeah, trick or treating is still alive in our neighborhood.

My neighbors with kids took them to another neighborhood to trick or treat. Only one came to my door

My neighborhood has kids living in single-family homes, but they all go trunk-or-treating. It’s extremely disappointing.

We had much nicer weather this year. I had maybe a third of the trick or treaters as I did last year.

It was much less than I expected, and I have a ton of candy left over. Like 90 full size candy bars left. Last year I went through 120 to 150. This year, we handed out about 70, and as it got later into the night I was handing out multiple to kids.

I’m in a middle class Chicago suburb. We’ve had ICE in our city and neighboring suburban cities. While I haven’t seen them on our street, we do think the general political climate kept a lot of families home.

Nope. Still going strong. And I’m in Germany. There were a lot of kids and teenagers around and people had an excellent time scaring the bejeebies out of each other. Standing outside and hearing the screaming was pretty funny.