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2007-01-10 CC
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2007-01-10 CC
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<br />~ <br /> <br />By Meghan Stromberg' <br /> <br />American Planning Associarion 21 <br /> <br />~ked Up~ Then Locked Out <br /> <br />Expert~ftj say <br /> <br />residency <br />re~.,trictiollS for <br />se~r offerlders <br /> <br />ma'y create <br /> <br />10.- <br /> <br />more problems <br />thall they solve. <br /> <br />~ <br /> <br /> <br />---- <br /> <br /> <br />ames Hill was set to be released from prison in <br />the summer of2005 and had arranged for post- <br />incarceration housing at a mission. But on the <br />day of his release, Hill (not his real name) learned <br />from prison authorities that he wasn't allowed <br />to live at the shelter. His choice was either to <br />find appropriate housing or-be transferred to <br />another prison until he could. "I'd already been <br />in prison for 16 years; I didn't want to stay any <br />longer," he said in a phone interview. <br />That's when Hill's struggle to find a place to <br />live began. His family's house was within 1,000 <br />feet of a school, and a state law-passed after <br />his conviction-prohibited Hill, a sex offender, <br />from living there. He moved temporarily into <br />an overpriced trailer in the middle of nowhere, <br />he says, but his family eventually moved so that <br />he could live with them. Shortly after moving in, <br />his parole officer told him the new house was off- <br />limirs because it was less than 1,000 feet from <br />a playground. "But I knew enough about the <br />planning office and GIS to ask a planner there <br />to give me a reading," Hill says. It was 1,323 <br />feet away, and he was allowed to stay. <br />Hill's contact with the planning office was <br /> <br />resourceful but not random after he received an <br />undergraduate degree then worked with GIS, <br />helping to digitize county maps. <br />Hill says he's fortunate to have a supportive <br />family. Even so, he says that laws that restrict <br />where he can-and more precisely, cannot-live <br />are unfair and ineffecrive. "Everywhere you turn <br />there's a school or a park [going up.] It's a felony <br />for me to live [near one]," he says. <br />But is a convicted sex offender's challenge in <br />finding housing a planning problem? "It's mosr <br />definitely a planning issue," Hill adds. "What <br />if I'd owned property before I went to prison?" <br />Besides, he says, "my crime had nothing to do <br />wirh where I live. Putting those restrictions on <br />people like me doesn't help keep the community <br />safer-in facr, they give people a false sense of <br />security. " <br />Hill was convicted of molesting a child in his <br />family. Like him, the vast maj ority of sex offenders <br />aren't strangers--experts say that 90 percent of <br />rhem know their victims or are related to them. <br />''I'm not asking anyone to feel sorry for me. <br />r did the crime and I'm paying the price, but I <br />think [the government] crossed the line." <br />
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