Apartment complex welcomes sex offenders with nowhere to go; some neighbors upset

9-15-2012 Florida:

Fairfield Apartments sits in a quiet neighborhood in south Fort Myers.

On a recent afternoon, children played on well-groomed lawns as a boy rode his bicycle down a winding street dotted with palm trees.

But Julie Evans has a message for her neighbors in the apartment complex down the street.

“I got a gun,” she said. “And I will use that gun.”

There are 22 registered sex offenders living at Fairfield Apartments and 12 in surrounding homes. Despite hostility from neighbors such as Evans, this neighborhood has offered the warmest welcome they’ve known.

Now, new owners of one of the complex’s five buildings have asked tenants to leave — they want to erase the decade-old image of Fairfield Apartments as sex-offender friendly.

The apartment complex off San Carlos Boulevard and Summerlin Road is one of very few in Lee County where sex offenders, or SOs, as they call themselves, can live. Legal restrictions prevent those who offended against minors from living within 1,000 feet of schools or other places children congregate. Landlords are often reluctant to rent to sex offenders and many offenders can’t pay rent because they can’t find jobs.

And so, sex offenders from across the state flock to Fairfield Apartments.

“Other than a small area in Lehigh Acres where there are large desolate areas that are not within 1,000 feet of where children congregate, which is the eastern part of the county and away from most jobs, the only option is (Fairfield Apartments) or the woods,” Circuit Administrator Pam Donelson of the Florida Department of Corrections said in an email. “There are a few other very small pockets of desolate residential areas that comply, but they are few and far between.”

Pamela Eaton, property manager of Fairfield Apartments, often waives the $200 security deposit for offenders recently released from prison and lets them owe her the first month’s $450 rent. She recruits in prisons throughout the state.

Eaton’s goal is to help paroled sex offenders become independent, productive members of society. Her apartments are a stepping stone toward that end, she said. ...continued... by Marisa Kendall