Posted on 06/13/2006 10:13:43 AM PDT by Abathar
A new subdivision planned in Kansas will look and feel just like any other development in the fast-growing area.
But there's one big difference: Registered sex offenders won't be allowed to live in the new development in Lenexa, Kan. The development will be off of K-10 highway and and Woodland Road in Johnson County, Kan.
In August, construction begins on the Kansas City area's first sex-offender-restricted subdivision, probably only the second such development nationwide.
A Texas-based developer said his plan is an answer to a problem communities wrestle with -- how to keep sexual predators far from children and families.
Their first such project in Lubbock, Texas, has nearly sold out in nine months. Developer Clayton Isom said he's planning other such subdivisions in the Kansas City area after the Lenexa project is finished.
"Certainly, there are things you can do to improve a neighborhood, like pour better streets or build a park. But this is more," Isom told The Kansas City Star. "We can keep one little girl or boy safe."
The developer works closely with homeowners' associations to draw up restrictions banning registered offenders from living inside the development. Potential owners will undergo background checks. If a homeowner becomes a sex offenders after they move in, the association will give them huge financial penalties, a fine of at least $1,000 a day, until they move out of the neighborhood, The Star reported. And a lien may be put on the house, in order to collect the money.
Apparently, the exclusion of sex offenders is legal. Lubbock's community development executive director Nancy Haney told The Star that the restrictions do not violate the Fair Housing Act.
"Sex offenders aren't considered one of the seven protected classes," Haney said. "The developers did their homework."
Isom said his company wants to lobby lawmakers to create financial incentives for developers who create neighborhoods that ban sex offenders.
Not everyone is happy about the idea.
"If entire towns and municipalities do this, you have serious constitutional issues," Brett Shirk, executive director of the area chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Star. "If you start outlawing all these areas, where are offenders going to live?" He said it is a "slippery slope."
The restrictions do not apply to people who have been removed from the sex-offender registry or people who have other crimes on their records. It only applies to sex offenders on the sex-offender registry.
Isom said he got the idea for the subdivisions after he heard about a 9-year-old Florida girl, Jessica Lunsford, who was kidnapped, raped and killed -- allegedly by a registered sex offender. Court records said that convicted sex offender John Evander Couey admitted kidnapping Jessica, keeping her in his bedroom for several days and burying her alive behind his home.
San Francisco, of course... was that a trick question?
There will always be liberal safe havens for them to flock to, S.F. was the first that came to my mind also.
Some enterprising developer should build a subdivision just for sexual predators. That way everyone would know where they are, and could stay away.
And it would make for a nicely target-rich environment where some enterprising soul could, um... "administer the justice that Americans refuse to administer".
That is in effect already happening in some places, where the available housing is very limited. Then people want legislators to fix that problem.
Didn't sex crimes used to be a capital offense?
In prisons maybe?
If they are still a threat to society, why are they released?
Only if it happens to an elite's kid.
Murder used to be a capital offense, too.
Jail?
One is not forced to live on a private land development.
The ACLU would lose this one.
Besides, residential areas often have all sorts of little rules, such as what type of shingles your houses can have.
I don't think this will be struck down if that has not.
Some Florida state legislator (or some state in the southeast) is proposing the death penalty for repeat sex offenders.
All sorts of rules can be enacted for subdivisions. I don't think the fact that these people served their time for their crimes will mean somehow this is an area that can't be looked at.
I remember this story, but I think it was if they violate a child, maybe 14 and under... but I don't recall exactly.
"Sex Offender" can technically mean a 18 year old high school senior doing the deed (consentually) with his 17 year old prom date.
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