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22 Planning January 2007 Yes in your backyard '.; oi It's difficult to feel sympathy for people like Hill, who have hurt children or sexually as- saulted adults. Highly publicized cases like that ofJessica Lunsford, a Florida girl who in 2005 was abducted, assaulted, and buried alive by a convicted sex offender, keep violent sex crimes in the news. While sexual abuse has dropped 40 percent in the last two decades, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, few jurisdictions are pre- pared when convicted sex offenders are released from prison and reenter the community. Twenty-one states and hundreds of munici- palities have passed laws restricting where sex offenders can live. Do they work? Do they make communities safer? Many places think so and are passing residency laws at a steady clip, in many cases competing to craft more restrictive laws than the next town over. Still, residency restrictions have their crit- ics. Making sections of a city uninhabitable to sex offenders greatly reduces offenders' access to housing, employment, transportation, and services. Those who treat sex offenders say that situation creates more problems: Without sup- port, stable housing, jobs, and access to treat- ment, sex offenders-and all criminals-are statistically more likely to commit new crimes. They are also more likely to go underground, making it impossible to monitor them. Released sex offenders live in every state. "We want to believe they are the few, the perverted, and the far away," says David D'Amora, a therapist who works with sex offenders in Con- necticut and chairs the public policy committee of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, based in Beaverton, Oregon. In fact, there are more than half a million registered sex offenders nationwide, with more than 100,000 in California alor;.e. How the laws have evolved Since 1994, sex offenders have been required to register with local authorities on a regular basis. The federal law passed that year, the Ja- cob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, '-"'1 is named after an l1-year-old Minnesota boy who was abducted and never found. While U.S. law compels sex offenders to register, state laws dictate how often and for how long; 11 states require lifetime registration. A 1996 amendment to the Jacob Wetterling Act, Megan's Law, added a community notifi- cation requirement, which also varies by state. Most states publish an online database of sex offenders' names, addresses, and convictions, whereas others leave it to local authorities to circulate information to nearby neighbors or schools. The law is named after the high-profile case of Megan Kanka, a seven-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and killed by a known sex offender who had moved in across the street from her family. With Megan's Law, "we created an opportu- nityfor the public to know where sex offenders live," says Suzanne Brown-McBride, a victims advocate and executive director of CALCASA, the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault. She notes that no otherdassofcriminals, includ- ing murderers, is similarly monitored. Group Homes Still Struggle to Fit In The family that lives at 61 st Street and San Pablo Avenue in Oakland, California, is unusually large. Its household members occupy some 21 beds in a two-story Victorian house across from a school. The family is disciplined-breakfast is at 7:30 sharp, lunch at 1 :30-and it's also friendly, with someone almost always on the front stoop to greet passersby. But under many city codes this household would not qualify as a family. After all, its members are not related by blood, but rather by a common goal: to overcome the obstacles created by mental illness and substance abuse so that they can function in society. The house is a group home called Morning Star Villa. Group homes, ranging from a few beds to a couple dozen, house those who, because of an addiction or a disability, can't otherwise live independently. Over the past few decades, more and more disabled people have left institutions and moved into small group living situations. Like most group homes, Morning Star Villa does share aspects ofa family, including mutual support, many long-term residents, and life skills education-"stuff to get them familiar with society," says administrator Anthony Piano. But group homes are a different animal: Drug dealers target them. Most residents need caseworkers. And the homes have unique real estate needs such as latge buildings and inex- pensive property. That's the dilemma for planners used to cut- and-dried land-use categories. The 1988 federal Fair HousingAmenclments Act classified people with disabilities as a protected class for which cities must make "a reasonable accommodation" in their zoning codes. A 1995 U.S. Supreme Court case upheld the FHAA's application to zoning. But nearly two decades after the FHM became law, local governments are still struggling with how to regulate group homes. "A lot more cities are allowing community residences as residential uses, but many are getting it wrong," says Daniel Lauber, AICP, a planner and attorney who specializes in com- munity residence regulation. "The FHAA left people very confused." Community integration Group homes are part of a larger category known as community residences, which also includes halfway houses, a more temporary type of group living situation. Community residences have existed in the U.S. since the 1880s, says Lauber, but until the 1960s most policies leaned toward institutionalization for people with disabilities. In the 1960s and 70s that changed, as parenrs of people wirh disabilities filed lawsuits seeking alternatives to institutions. "The key to all of this is community iutegra- tion," Lauber says, helping to "make people all they can be." However, local governments lagged in regulating the growing number of community residences. ~ I' I I "Group homes wete an anathema," says Martin Jaffe, an associate professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illi- nois-Chicago. Generally, he says, group homes were regulated with conditional use permits. "It practically guaranteed everyone would show up to oppose them." Case law generally upheld those trying to keep group living situations out of single-fanlily residential areas. In 1974, in Belle Terre v. Boraas, the Supreme Court upheld a city's ordinance defining a family. The opinion stated that equal protection did not apply and that the courtS had no reason to interfere with a local jurisdiction's police power. In 1985's City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center decision, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the disabled received no special review.