2007-01-10 CC - Laserfiche WebLink

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~ By Meghan Stromberg' American Planning Associarion 21 ~ked Up~ Then Locked Out Expert~ftj say residency re~.,trictiollS for se~r offerlders ma'y create 10.- more problems thall they solve. ~ ---- ames Hill was set to be released from prison in the summer of2005 and had arranged for post- incarceration housing at a mission. But on the day of his release, Hill (not his real name) learned from prison authorities that he wasn't allowed to live at the shelter. His choice was either to find appropriate housing or-be transferred to another prison until he could. "I'd already been in prison for 16 years; I didn't want to stay any longer," he said in a phone interview. That's when Hill's struggle to find a place to live began. His family's house was within 1,000 feet of a school, and a state law-passed after his conviction-prohibited Hill, a sex offender, from living there. He moved temporarily into an overpriced trailer in the middle of nowhere, he says, but his family eventually moved so that he could live with them. Shortly after moving in, his parole officer told him the new house was off- limirs because it was less than 1,000 feet from a playground. "But I knew enough about the planning office and GIS to ask a planner there to give me a reading," Hill says. It was 1,323 feet away, and he was allowed to stay. Hill's contact with the planning office was resourceful but not random after he received an undergraduate degree then worked with GIS, helping to digitize county maps. Hill says he's fortunate to have a supportive family. Even so, he says that laws that restrict where he can-and more precisely, cannot-live are unfair and ineffecrive. "Everywhere you turn there's a school or a park [going up.] It's a felony for me to live [near one]," he says. But is a convicted sex offender's challenge in finding housing a planning problem? "It's mosr definitely a planning issue," Hill adds. "What if I'd owned property before I went to prison?" Besides, he says, "my crime had nothing to do wirh where I live. Putting those restrictions on people like me doesn't help keep the community safer-in facr, they give people a false sense of security. " Hill was convicted of molesting a child in his family. Like him, the vast maj ority of sex offenders aren't strangers--experts say that 90 percent of rhem know their victims or are related to them. ''I'm not asking anyone to feel sorry for me. r did the crime and I'm paying the price, but I think [the government] crossed the line."