Ideas arise on housing sex offenders

Published 9:28 am Friday, November 28, 2008

EVERETT — The state should aim to reduce the concentration of registered sex offenders placed in residential neighborhoods, encourage the development of sex offender housing in industrial areas and improve the public’s access to information about those offenders.

Those are some of the recommendations from a city task force appointed in September to form policy recommendations on housing sex offenders.

“With an issue like this, where everybody has strong views and a lot to say, we could have met for two years to talk about it,” said David Hall, a deputy city attorney who helped lead the task force. “People did a great job of stepping back and saying we’re going to make decisions based on the best facts available.”

The task force turned over its report to the Everett City Council this week. The city’s lobbyist and governmental affairs director are expected to forward some of the findings to state lawmakers and the newly formed state Sex Offender Policy Board.

The 21-member city task force was appointed by Mayor Ray Stephanson amid public outcry over an Everett landlord’s plan to convert a neglected 16-room mansion into a group home for convicted sex offenders.

The landlord’s business partner rents rooms to nearly 50 sex offenders in 11 homes concentrated on a few blocks in the Bayside Neighborhood near downtown. Residents there say the boarding houses have lowered their property values and caused families with children to move away.

There are currently 883 registered sex ­offenders living in Snohomish County, 377 of whom live in Everett, according to information compiled by the city.

State law forbids cities from regulating how close sex offenders can live to schools, day-cares and parks. Only the state Department of Corrections has a say in where sex offenders can live.

The state agency is limited to factors connected with the offender’s terms of release.

The task force included the Everett Public Schools superintendent, the Everett Housing Authority executive director, police officers, neighborhood leaders and victim advocates, as well as the head of the city’s largest homeless shelter.

The group consulted with several experts, including the chairwoman of a state committee that reviews all sex offenders released from state prisons, mental hospitals or juvenile rehabilitation facilities and assigns risk levels to each sex offender.

The Everett sex offender task force also heard from an Association of Washington Cities lobbyist who has been involved with state legislation related to sex offenders during the past decade, an Everett police detective who investigates sex offenders who fail to register and Department of Corrections officials who explained public notification requirements and sex offender treatment and supervision programs.

Shawn Hoban, president of the Everett property management company Coast Real Estate Services, was a member of the task force.

An important finding, he said, was that well-managed group housing could provide stability that can help reduce the probability of a reoffense.

The task force learned about group homes for sex offenders in Seattle and Spokane that are in primarily nonresidential areas, are supervised 24 hours a day and provide access to services that have been shown to reduce sex offender recidivism.

The group also learned that only 2 percent of all offenders are total strangers to their victims. Most are related or in positions of trust with victims.

“The risk of the registered sex offender living next to you is significantly less than what people presume it to be,” Hoban said. “Statistically it can be proven.”

Even so, the task force recommended diluting the concentration of sex offenders allowed to live in residential neighborhoods, because of the negative effect high concentrations of sex offenders have been known to have on property values.

Valerie Steel, a task force member who lives near the Bayside group homes, said she has come to believe that some people categorized as sex offenders shouldn’t be.

At the same time, she said enforcement of public notification rules is woefully inadequate.

In her experience, notices arrive sometimes weeks after sex offenders move into a neighborhood. A Department of Corrections official who spoke with the task force said that offenders are most likely to reoffend in the first month after being released from prison.

“I think the Department of Corrections has fallen flat on their face as far as providing education to the public,” she said. “There’s definitely room for improvement.”

Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.

The report’s key recommendations

A city task force released a report this week to the Legislature and Department of Corrections on housing for registered sex offenders. Here are some key recommendations:

Consider the concentration of sex offenders in a neighborhood before approving where a registered sex offender can live.

Fund and provide incentives for the development of supervised housing for registered sex offenders in nonresidential areas.

Create a clearinghouse of reliable information about sex offenders and sex crimes.

Study whether some communities are taking on a disproportionate number of sex offenders.