What happens when you discover sex offenders living in your Association?

Great way to live??? Most interesting is, that they seem to forget most all folks -in their youth- have committed some sexual act that under todays laws would make them a sex offender. And, the Center for Disease Control in their YOUTH SURVEY show that 47% of all teens are committing sex offenses regularly; how do they screen out these folks? How many registrants are removed from the registry yearly? What about all those folks with other criminal records and higher recidivism rates? I suggest ALL readers should add comments to the original article, she is asking for them..

3-6-2012 Florida:

This question came up when a Coalition member emailed me that he discovered there were several registered sex offenders/predators living in his Association. Most Associations do have or should have a screening process that would reveal criminal convictions of prospective unit owners or renters. But what if offenders moved in with unit owners without anyone knowing?

There are restrictions on how close sex offenders can live to schools or other facilities where there are children; however, location may not be an issue as regards Associations that are either not close to such facilities or are comprised of those who are 55 and over.

What is obviously a major problem is when offenders take up residence in Associations that have families with children in them. In all instances, these offenders would not have passed a screening committee that did its due diligence, and conscientious boards would want to make sure residents are protected.

We had a discussion via email about what could be done to both find out whether offenders are living in Associations and how to advise others about it without going over the boundary of what’s actionable.

There’s a website that a lot of people use to find out where in specific neighborhoods such offenders live. Just go to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s website www.fdle.state.fl.us and sign up for the offender alert for your neighborhood.

Next, ask your Association attorney what would be the best way to deal with the situation if you learn that an offender has moved into the Association either as an owner or renter, or someone who is living with residents that have been screened previously.

We did discuss putting the link to the state on the in-house website so everyone can use it and find out if there are such people living amongst them. But what happens upon discovery?

If anyone has had experience with this difficult issue, please let me know how you handled it and we’ll share. You don’t have to tell me you name or Association, just what you did to deal with the problem. ..Source.. by Charlotte Greenbarg