Landlord explains why he rents to sex offenders

11-10-2007 Wisconsin:

BECKER: By renting to the sex offenders, they are actually a better clientele for us and neighborhoods, you might say.

Ron Becker has spent 40 years renting rooms and apartments to all sorts of people. There are good tenants, bad ones and then there are the most controversial ones of all: sex offenders. Like just about everyone who has ever spoken his mind in public about sex offenders, Becker abhors the crime and understands when people consider it unforgivable. But as a property owner renting to tenants as a source of income, he has a view of sex offenders not often aired in this community. “You can be a bad person and be a good tenant,” Becker said this week in an interview with The Freeman.

THE FREEMAN: How many different properties do you own?

RON BECKER: In and around Waukesha, probably about eight. FREEMAN: How long have you been doing that? BECKER: Just about 40 years.

FREEMAN:You mentioned when we set up this interview that sex offenders are only some of the people, through your history of being a property owner, that you have rented to.You’re not just someone who has a special contract with the Department of Corrections?

BECKER: Well, one of the buildings does have a special contract with probation and parole. The other buildings do not.

FREEMAN: Renting properties, that’s just a source of income for you, right?

BECKER: Just like anybody else who rents out properties.

FREEMAN:You mentioned to me (earlier) that you wanted to point out that there are all different kinds of people who rent from you. I was just wondering if you can expand on that. Biography

WHO: Ron Becker, 66, of Waukesha ABOUT: Becker has rented properties in Waukesha for 40 years. He also runs a mortgage business and has been involved in other enterprises through the years, though he says he recently scaled back as he has aged. Becker owns eight properties in Waukesha that he rents. His most well-known property is a rooming house at 319 E. Main St. that is at least partially rented to released sex offenders through a contract with the state Department of Corrections. Becker is clear, though, that his properties are rented to a variety of people, and he is not just a landlord to sex offenders.

FREEMAN: How is that?

BECKER: Before we started renting to sex offenders, we were renting to some people who were much more undesirable, as far as criminal and more undesirable people than should live in Waukesha. As we began to take on some of the sex offenders, the worse element that we would rent to seemed to fall to the wayside.

FREEMAN: Really?

BECKER: That’s correct. Now, if they’re restricting these sex offenders from our buildings, that’s all right. They’re going to move to other parts of the city, but then we’re going to be getting more of that, or probably will accept some of that more undesirable tenant – which we’ll try not to. But we’ll end up getting some of that. Those are the people that wander the streets and may mug somebody on the street. Or if the person’s walking the street, it’s the people we really don’t want here. We’re not the only ones that rent to them, but that’s the element that the city wants to get rid of also. It’s a problem.

FREEMAN: The types of people you mentioned with different criminal backgrounds, the undesirables, as you said?

BECKER: Right, you can’t discriminate and get rid of all of them. I mean, you can turn a lot of them down, but you have to keep your buildings full. You can’t leave the properties empty because somebody’s undesirable. You’re going to rent to people, and the better the tenants you can get, the better it is for you.

Now, sex offenders are better tenants. Their mentality is not better. They’re obviously a sex offender. They’re someone we really don’t care to rent to in the city of Waukesha. They’re there. They’re good tenants with a bad mentality, but they’re not walking the streets like your common criminal that you might see walking downtown because they’re monitored, they’re restricted. They’re in their house, they’re not out on the street.

FREEMAN: When they are on this release and the state is constantly checking up on them, for your purposes as a property owner, that makes them effective and good tenants for you?

BECKER: Well, sure. They’re not allowed to have guests running in and out. They’re now allowed to drink. They’re not allowed to do practically anything except sit in that room. It makes them a good tenant. There has never been a sex offender in the city of Waukesha that has ever reoffended, and there’s probably been a very few in the state.

FREEMAN: Well, that’s not entirely true. I remember there was a guy, Joe Smith, that lived downtown ...

BECKER: It’s not Joe. It’s Dan Smith. I think it’s Daniel Smith. ... Now, wait a minute now, the one police officer at the meeting (Tuesday), I had brought that up, and he agreed with me (that) none of them have reoffended. Some of them have done things, but they haven’t actually reoffended.

FREEMAN: So you acknowledge that they have violated the terms of their probation or release?

BECKER: Yeah, almost all of them violate the terms of their release, but it’s not through reoffending as a sex crime. It might be for having a beer, or it might be for having an adult woman in his room, which he’s not allowed to have. It might be for a lot of small, incidental things he’s not supposed to do. They bring them in for a lie detector test and they ask him if he’s done this or looked at pornography or had a girl in his room or if he’s had a beer. And he answers these questions and if it comes up positive on the lie detector test, he goes back to jail.

FREEMAN: I just wanted to make that clear because ...

BECKER: No, no, no ... almost all of them, it seems, go back to jail when they’re on early release one, two, three, four times.

FREEMAN: You mentioned one of your properties (has) a contract with the Department of Corrections.

BECKER: Yes.

FREEMAN: Is that the one at 319 E. Main St.?

BECKER: Yes.

FREEMAN: I wanted to ask you how that came about.

BECKER: First they contacted me to rent to sex offenders and I said I wouldn’t rent to sex offenders. Then they asked me down to their office and I agreed, and I went down and after they got through giving me the pertinent information on why I should rent to them, I felt I was doing a service to the community by renting to them. Because if they cannot find a place for these guys to live and they do serve their time, they can get a writ of habeas corpus and they can get released, and if they don’t have a place to live, they can’t monitor them. So now they’re out on the street. They’re much more dangerous out on the street, not being monitored. I figured I’m doing some sort of a service to house them, keep them off the streets.

FREEMAN: How long ago ...

BECKER: That’s how it started out. It was four or five years ago.

FREEMAN: With that Main Street property?

BECKER: Right.

FREEMAN: I was curious if you’ve ever had second thoughts about that. I don’t know if you’ve seen some of the comments in the paper, but it seems, of late, in the last several months people have gotten really worked up about it. And, obviously, they passed a law this week.

BECKER: I’m not concerned about it the smallest little bit. The reason for it is, there was a news conference in front of our building, the neighbor that lives right next door to 319 (E. Main St.) was complaining or whatever, and they had a news conference there and she was making a big thing of it. There were ... 50 people outside and there was a big thing in the paper, and she’s talking about sex offenders in our building, and about two weeks later she has one of them in her house, playing cards with her, associating with her, children and everything.

FREEMAN: When did this happen?

BECKER: Oh, this happened a couple of years ago. She was looking for the notoriety, and here she is mingling with the sex offenders, playing cards with them. It’s amazing. I couldn’t believe it. The one that cried the loudest was the one that associated with the sex offenders the most.

FREEMAN: What about your interactions with them?

BECKER: Oh, I have interactions all the time.

FREEMAN: You don’t hesitate when you hear they’re coming from the state. They pay their rent?

BECKER: They pay their rent better than anybody. They’re hard workers. Sex offenders, basically, in all respects are good people. They pay good. They’re neat, they’re clean. Everything about them is good, except for the part of their brain or wherever it is where the mentality is to do what they do.

FREEMAN: But a lot of people think that mentality is unforgivable.

BECKER: Oh yeah, it sure is. It sure is, there’s no question about it. But you have to remember this, too, most sex offenders – I don’t know what percentage but it’s probably 95 percent – only offend on people they know. The family member, 90 percent of them, that’s what it is. So when they’re out on the street, the people in Waukesha complaining about them, they’re complaining about nothing. There’s nothing to complain about.

FREEMAN: You were there (Tuesday) at the council meeting, right?

BECKER: Yes.

FREEMAN: When I read (about it), there was a mention at the end that one of the council members invited some state legislators to come down and explore why Waukesha has so many sex offenders.

BECKER: I saw that. You know why there’s a lot of them in Waukesha?

FREEMAN: Why is that?

BECKER: Because all their services are here. Probation and parole has their office here. They have to go to that office weekly, sometimes biweekly. I think some of them have to (go) up there every two days to meet with their probation officers. They have meetings for – what do they call that? – for the rehabilitation, counseling. They have that in Waukesha. They don’t have it in Delafield and Oconomowoc. They have to have it some place, and this is the county seat. This is where the state office building is down here in Waukesha County. This is the city that has some rooming houses, it has some low-income, it has affordable housing for them. Most all of them are not high paid.

FREEMAN: I’d imagine it’s difficult to get a high-paying job as a sex offender.

BECKER: Right. If they had made rules stricter (Tuesday), like a 1,000 feet or 1,500 feet, these guys would have no place to live. How are they going to come to their meetings? That’s why they force them underground, and then they don’t have any registration. Now, they don’t know where they live. None of the neighbors know whether they’re living next to them or not. It’s far better to know where they’re living, even if they’re living next door to you. ... If you know the facts about them, that they haven’t reoffended, you can’t find one that reoffended. They usually only interact with people they know. There’s very few of them that lure kids into their home. It’s a very rare thing. Basically, the sex offenders are not really that much of a threat to the neighbors.

FREEMAN: Because you know who they are?

BECKER: If you know the statistics, all the statistics on them, they’re not really the threat that people are making them out to be. The people that are the real threat to the neighbors and the community are the criminals walking the street that are coming out of Milwaukee, coming out of those bad neighborhoods in Milwaukee, walking the streets.

FREEMAN: These are the people you mentioned, the previous tenants?

BECKER: Two of them tried to rob my daughter and grandkids. A sex offender has never tried to do that. You’ve got some real bad elements coming into Waukesha here. They’re trying to make downtown nice. Well, they’re never going to do it with those types of people walking the streets and loitering downtown and causing problems. I see it every day.

..more.. by James Kogutkiewicz