WI- Home values not hurt by predators

6-3-2003 Wisconsin:

No evidence found that prices suffer over the long term after sex offender moves into area

On Milwaukee's N. 51st St., signs of hostility pierce the front yards for blocks - a collective unwelcome mat for neighborhood newcomer and sexual predator Billy Lee Morford.

"Move Him Out of Here!" "Get the Hell Out!" "Go Live With the Judge" and "Who's next?Saddam!" were among the greetings for Morford, a serial child molester who moved to 6535 N. 51st on Monday, courtesy of the state Department of Health and Family Services.

In Barb Grepo's opinion, only one sign wouldn't draw much interest in her modest, 1950s-era ranch-house neighborhood these days: a for-sale sign.

"My husband and I were thinking of moving in the next few years," Grepo said. "But who wants to buy a home four doors from a child molester?"

Her neighbor across the street, Tracy Salinel, agreed.

"We were told our property values have gone down already. I didn't think it would happen that quick, but it did," she said. But after tracking down the source of that "fact," she learned it had come from a newspaper columnist's wisecrack.

"Oh," Salinel said.

Anxiety about public safety and property values is typical of the 34 sexual predator placements statewide that preceded this one, officials say. They consider the fear and anger understandable but misguided given that none of the sexual predators identified under the 1994 law has committed any new crimes.

"Since the goal was to protect the public from further offenses . . . I'd call this a success," said Deborah J. McCulloch, who oversees the state's supervised-release program for these felons.

What's harder to gauge is the effect on property values. While there may well be a short-term shock, there appears to be no evidence that home values decline in those neighborhoods over the long term.

Rick Staff, general counsel to Wisconsin Realtors Association in Madison, said the value of homes is determined by a wide array of factors and it is difficult to determine with precision what effect a placement has.

"How would you track the impact of a population that's so mobile? And values are determined by location, amenities, proximity to public transportation and jobs, not by these transient problems," Staff said.

Neighbor admits 'overreaction'
The experience of a Madison neighborhood with Wisconsin's most notorious sex offender is illustrative. For five years, the state capital's southwest side was home to Gerald Turner - the man who sparked the sexual predator law.

Dubbed "the Halloween Killer" for the day in 1973 when he snatched, assaulted and killed 9-year-old Lisa French of Fond du Lac, Turner was moved in 1998 into a halfway house at 5706 Odana Road, on the edge of a commercial district bordering two residential enclaves.

Nearby residents reacted with fear and anger to the state Department of Corrections' decision to put Turner within blocks of their homes and children.

Kathy Vertz, Tess Roherty and others talked about moving to escape the damage that Turner's presence was expected to cause in their neighborhood.

Five years later, though, the neighbors have mellowed. "I think, on my part, it was an overreaction," Vertz said. "We didn't have any problems."

Turner lived uneventfully in the Foster Community Corrections Center, tucked behind a used car lot, until authorities discovered he had pornography on his computer. He was sent back to prison in April for violating his parole, and he will serve 15 more years of his original sentence.

In time, people adjusted to having the child killer in their neighborhood, to the point that he and the halfway house became an afterthought, Vertz said. The residents still don't like having a halfway house right down the street, but for the most part they have come to accept it, she said.

One reason may be that the "there goes the neighborhood" fears were unfounded. A check of City of Madison assessment records shows that home values just to the west and northwest of Turner's residence rose from $125,400 in 1998 to $168,900 today and that homes to the south and southeast rose from $154,900 to $210,000. In no year did values decline, reported Michael G. Kurth, the city's chief assessor. Homes near Turner's showed price appreciation levels similar to those farther away, he said.

"But Turner wasn't right in the middle of a residential area, like in Milwaukee's case. He was where there would have been a lot of eyes on him during the day, and no families right around him at night," Kurth said.

Madison residents, like those in many communities, have complained about the effect of property values when lawbreakers and the mentally impaired move in nearby, Kurth said. "But I can think of no specific cases where we made a change to property values based on that."

Indeed, Roherty's worries about the future of her neighborhood have changed. Now, rising property values and property taxes are more likely to drive her out of her home than all the sex offenders, drug offenders and other criminals staying in the Foster Center.

"I'm a widow, and it's awful hard to stay here," she said.

Neighbors organize
Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, Morford's neighbors have organized themselves and their elected officials in a crusade to get rid of him as soon as possible. He is the first sexual predator placed in the city. A court hearing on his placement is scheduled June 23 before Milwaukee Circuit Judge John Franke.

"There ought to be plenty of industrial areas, with an odd home here and there, that he can go," said Grepo, the neighbor. She and others believe the state should require sexual predators to live in areas where there are few residences.

Terry Marshall, the president and chief executive officer of Attic Correctional Services Inc., which runs the Foster Center where Turner lived and owns the house where Morford now lives, agrees with Grepo on this point. He said elected officials should pursue zoning changes to make it easier to place treatment centers and halfway houses in commercial and industrial areas. Old warehouses, manufacturing buildings or retail shops could be renovated to house criminals on parole or probation, he said.

That would spare elected officials from a lot of angry constituents in the years ahead, Marshall reasoned, because the numbers of sex offenders and drug offenders being released from prison to communities is going nowhere but up.

"We're going to have to look for folks to do some profiles-in-courage stuff here and say let's get serious. This is real. We have some re-entry issues here beyond anything we comprehended even a decade ago," Marshall said. "The rubber meets the road in the community."

Until that happens, Grepo said, her neighborhood's sign and lobbying campaign will continue unabated.

But Milwaukee Assessment Commissioner Mary Reavey and Staff, the Realtors' general counsel, said such an effort can backfire.

"Any neighborhood that gets a lot of negative attention, whether for burglaries, a sex offender moving in, people leaving garbage in the street, could see an impact on marketability for a short period of time," Staff said. "When those issues settle down, the market recovers."

Reavey pointed to Milwaukee's Story Hill, a west side neighborhood engaged in a sign war against expansion of nearby I-94.

"Go to Story Hill and you'll see all the signs - 'No Freeway Expansion,' 'Don't Ruin Our Neighborhood.' Story Hill has been a neighborhood of healthy value increases, sometimes double-digit. This year, there's been no increase in value," Reavey said. "You drive through a neighborhood and saw all these angry signs, what would you think? You'd say, 'Think I'll look somewhere else.' " ..News Source.. by MICHELE DERUS and TOM HELD