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I But, says Brown-McBride, the registry stirs up all sortS of NIMBY issues, with opponents of this unwanted population mounting fierce, highly emotional arguments. ''As a consequence of these laws, no one wants to live by them," she says. "That's where it becomes a planning problem. From the outset, you've got compet- ing goals" -tracking where offenders live in the community, but also letting community members know where they are. Child safety zones and residency restrictions emerged in 2000, Brown-McBride says. "They followed the model of nuisance codes, places with drug-free and prostitute-free zones. Some states did it very narrowly-around schools and day care centers. Others made it almost impossible to live anywhere." Today's residency laws assume that reducing the likelihood of contact with children will reduce the chance of abuse. These "distance marker" laws typically prohibit known sex of- fenders from living-and sometimes working or loitering-within acenain distance of schools, day care centers, and "places where children congregate." They may also specifically include parks, certain public areas, churches, and school bus Stops. The least testrictive distance matker ordinances mandate a 500-foot buffer, but dis- tances of 1 ,000 and 2,500 feet are common. Several of the laws have withstood constitu- tional challenges. The most notable is in Iowa, where registered sex offenders are prohibited from living within 2,000 feet of a school, day care provider, or park. In 2005, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the state law as constitutional in Doe v. Miller, after a suit was brought by the ACLD. The coun concluded that the law did not amount to "punishment" and declared that the Constitution does not guarantee a "right to live where you choose." Critics have charged that residency laws amount to banishment. Courts have disagreed. Proponents of the laws argue that "if you draw circles around schools, there still may be pock- ets where sex offenders can live," says Stephen JohnsonGrove, an attorney with the Ohio Justice and Policy Center. He notes that the laws are made possible by technology used by planners American Planning Associa[ion 23 every day. "These laws exist only because GIS exists. There's no way they'd send a surveyor to evaluate every sex offender's living situation. But with GIS, it's easy to do." JohnsonGrove is working with sex offenders challenging Ohio's residency law, which went into effect in 2005. That state, as well as Ken- tucky, Georgia, and Oklahoma, has no provision for grandfathering in sex offenders who lived within a buffer zone when the law was passed. One client is 75 and has lived in his house for 35 years. He says that offenders in those situations "come to us because rheyare being thrown our. We're not challengingwherher rhey committed an offense or not, but [this] violates the ex post facto clause-you can'r impose punishment after the fact." Broad brush Some states and cities have opted not to pass residency laws. Covington, Kentucky, a Cincin- nati suburb, defeated such an ordinance in spring 2005. The proposed law would have created a 2,000-foot buffer (Kentucky's law is 1,000 feet). Fair housing rules The 1988 passage of the Fair Housing Amend- mems Act forced courts and local governments to treat the disabled differently. The law added the disabled to its existing list of protected classes. Under the act, the broad definition of "handicap" extends to alcohol or drug ad- diction. However, the law excludes residents "whose tenancy would constitute a direct threat to the health and safety of other individuals." The Kansas supreme court ruled lasr April that Leavenworth County, near Kansas City, could prohibit the operation ofa group home for high- risk sex offenders who are elderly and disabled (News, August/September 2006). The FHAA also required that cities whose zoning law did notlimit the number of unrelated people that could live in a single-family residence The Gosser Care Home, a six-bed group home for the mentally ill, is located on a cul-de-sac in a residential neighborhood of Milpitas, California. allow group homes as-of-right. It required those with more restrictive definitions of fam- ily to make "reasonable accommodations" for homes housing the disabled. Seven years larer, in Edmonds v. OxfordHouse, the Supreme Court upheld the FHAA and established that local laws that define families in a way that excludes group homes are nor exempt from the law. Experts like Lauber say the government had good reason to force cities to approach commu- nity residences more like families and less like institutions. He cites over 100 studies that show that community residences have little impact on property values, as long as group homes are not clustered on one block. Jaffe points out that traffic and congestion, often a top concern of low-density neighborhoods, are also likely to have a minimal impact because few residents own vehicles. Many cities have stopped regulating group homes alrogether. "The pendulum swung way far the other way," says Eric King, the com- munity residential siting coordinator for the Portland, Oregon, Office of Neighborhood Involvement. King says Portland amended its code in the early 1990s to allow group homes in any residential district. "Things got sited anywhere, without any process," King says. As a result, new problems began to occur: The lack of regulations allowed providers to cluster homes in certain neighbor- hoods. Neighbors armed with negative stereo- types stormed city hall looking for recourse. Something similar was happening in Mil- waukee. Until this year, the city mandated that group homes must be at least 2,500 feet apart. As more and more community residences came into the city, that requirement was largely ignored. Alderman Joe Davis led an effort to map com- munity residences and found a disproportionate number of the facilities in his northwestern district. "Literally, one would be approved on one block and then another would apply for the same block," creating concerns among families about neighborhood instability, Davis says. Group home advocates are trying to abolish both the city law and a similar state statute. Portland's solution was the creation of the Community Residence Siting program, which applies couRict dispute tesolution tactics to group home sitings that stir discontent among neigh- bors. The program identifies community leaders and brings them together with care providers to map out a public involvement process, with the city office as a mediator. King says the mediation has paid off. "We don't have people screaming at elected officials anymore," he says. Jaffe, meanwhile, isn't afraid to say that the best place for many group homes, especially larger ones, may be in multifamily zones, where ameni- ties like shopping and transportation are more likely to be within easy walking distance. Tim Sullivan Sullivan is a freelance writer in Oakland, California.