TN- Nashville Rescue Mission ejects (MALE) sex offenders during renovations

8-22-2009 Tennessee:

A $5.4 million renovation to the Nashville Rescue Mission's shelters for men and women will mean beds for dozens more families struggling with homelessness.

It also means that for the next four months, registered sex offenders are no longer welcome at the city's only year-round shelter for transient homeless men, and they probably will be sleeping on Nashville's streets.

Last week, women and children were moved from the Rosa L. Parks Boulevard shelter and relocated to the men's mission on Lafayette Street while renovations at the women's shelter are under way. The mission decided male sex offenders had to leave.

Homeless men who are not sex offenders will be allowed to stay in another part of the building while the women and children are there.

Nearly half of the roughly 120 sex offenders in Nashville who list themselves as homeless are registered as residing at the rescue mission, according to data from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. The mission decided to evict anyone registered as a sex offender, out of concern for the safety of the children staying there.

"The children are the innocent bystanders in this," mission spokesman Cliff Tredway said.

Tredway is pretty sure the mission was the only place in town allowing sex offenders to stay the night, and he realizes the roughly 60 men who have stayed recently at the mission are probably sleeping on the streets.

He said it was a difficult decision for the organization, which prides itself on believing that God is a God of second, third and fourth chances. "This is the exact opposite of our message, and that bothers us," Tredway said. "But we feel very comfortable with children being the motivating factor behind this decision."

The sex offenders will be welcome to return to the mission in December, when the women and children return to the North Nashville location and new transitional housing also under construction.

The police department advised the mission that anyone who is prohibited from living with children would be violating the terms of their probation, Metro police spokeswoman Kristin Mumford said, but the mission leadership decided on its own to rule out all sex offenders.

"Those on the sex offender registry who are homeless do need to report once a month," Mumford said. "We're still actively making sure than any individual on the sex offender registry complies." ..Source.. by Kate Howard