2-9-2010 Florida:
Driving through Broadview Park, a square-mile neighborhood west of Fort Lauderdale, Randy Young splits his attention between the single-level stucco homes outside his window and the laptop affixed to the dashboard of his Toyota pickup. The laptop is equipped with a specially programmed GPS system that displays what looks like a Venn diagram: overlapping, color-coded circles—purple for schools, yellow for day-care centers, and green for parks—marking areas where sex offenders cannot live. In recent months, those circles have been expanding, as the small community, an unincorporated area of Broward County bordered by State Road 7, Interstate 595, and the Florida Turnpike, tries to expel new and unwanted residents.
“See this house here? That’s where we put 24 sex offenders,” says Young, tapping his finger against the glass at a house on SW 22nd Street. “Now there’s only five.”
Young is 53 years old, tan and heavyset, with receding hair and rectangular glasses. He is a registered sex offender, convicted in 2003 of a lewd or lascivious act with a minor—“a 19-year-old girl performed oral sex on a 15-year-old boy in my presence”—and runs a for-profit business called Habitat for Sex Offenders, finding housing for people who have been convicted of sex crimes ranging from child pornography to kidnapping and rape. He operates about 20 houses and 30 apartments in seven counties across South and Central Florida.
Since 2005—when 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered by a registered sex offender who lived next door—many local governments in Florida have increased the buffer zones that separate sex-offender residences from places where children congregate, and the question of what to do with paroled sex criminals has reverberated from county to county. No one wants to live near them, but no one, especially law enforcement, knows where to put them.
“Everybody says put them on an island,” says Young. “Every sex offender I know would say, ‘Where’s the island? I’ll go! Just tell me where it is.’”
Young made such an island out of Broadview Park. The neighborhood feels forgotten, with derelict vehicles parked on patchy lawns, and rusted wire fences surrounding recently repossessed homes. By early 2008, when Young discovered the area using his GPS system, it was one of the last places in the county with a buffer zone of 1,000 feet, the minimum state requirement, while nearby counties had increased theirs to 2,500 feet. Young leased four houses from landlords desperate enough not to be selective about their tenants, and took in sex offenders who had been living in a tent city under Miami’s Julia Tuttle Causeway. He also bought a three-bedroom foreclosed home for $150,000 and rented it out to nine sex offenders, charging them each $600 a month.
“Randy said, ‘Pay what you can, I’ll work with you,’” said Eddie Pruna, who lived in the house of 24 and kept losing work when his employers found out he had molested his 10-year-old niece. “He helped me when I was on my last nerve.”
Pruna and his roommate, Robert Taylor (12 years for molesting his daughters), paid Young by doing construction work on his other properties. “It’s awful hard, being what we are, to find a place to live,” Taylor said. “We’re supposed to go to therapy and reintegrate into society, but society doesn’t want to see us.”
In 2007, according to the Broadview Park Civic Association, there were four registered sex offenders in the neighborhood; by April 2009, there were 106. Graciela Ortiz, a resident who had 14 sex offenders on her street, began to keep her grandchildren indoors.
Though sex offenders were free to live in Broadview Park, unlicensed rooming houses were illegal, and code-enforcement officials threatened Young with fines unless residents vacated his overpopulated homes. Meanwhile, John Rodstrom, the commissioner of Broward County’s District 7, which includes Broadview, rushed to pass a temporary ordinance mandating a 2,500-foot buffer, which effectively made it impossible for new sex offenders to move in.
“People are afraid of sex offenders, and maybe they have a right to be,” Rodstrom told me. “They certainly have a right to be concerned about their property values, because if it’s a sex-offender haven, people aren’t going to buy in that area.”
The 2,500-foot ordinance was made permanent in September, but it allowed sex criminals who already listed Broadview Park as their permanent address to stay.
Things have since quieted down in the neighborhood. After repeated warnings from code enforcement, many men have moved on, including Taylor and Pruna, whom Young placed in a home in Fort Myers. Some have gone back to living under the causeway. Eighty sex offenders now live in Broadview Park.
Despite their differences, Young and Rodstrom agree that a better solution would be to establish housing in industrial areas—for instance, Young suggested that a major orange-juice company could hire sex offenders to pick its oranges on the condition that they live in corporate housing.
“A good law would be figuring out where they could live,” rather than where they can’t, said Rodstrom. “But no politician would ever do that, because that’s the death of your career.”
As Young crosses State Road 7 into Fort Lauderdale, where the buffer is set at a more friendly 1,400 feet, he glances back at his GPS system. “These used to be million-dollar homes. Last I checked, they were half a million, and now they are probably somewhere around $200,000. So guess what? They’re for rent,” he says. “Two years ago, before the economy collapsed, none of this would have been possible.”
We pass a brick home with large glass windows and a red foreclosure sign on its lawn. Young gets excited. “Oh yeah, another foreclosure,” he says. “They keep pushing and pushing, so I’ll keep moving. All the zoning restrictions did was push us into the rich area.”
The dot on the map representing Young’s truck enters a tiny patch of gray between the spheres of purple, green, and yellow, and Young declares that we are safe here. ..Source.. Irina Aleksander
February 9, 2010
Sex-Offender City
August 3, 2009
FL- Offender building real estate empire
8-3-2009 Florida:
Registered sex offender Randy Young is building a small real estate empire thanks to laws restricting where registered sex offenders may live.
Registered himself, Young owns seven Central Florida properties and manages two dozen more that he rents to offenders. His enterprise is known as "Habitat for Sex Offenders."
"When I first got out and tried to find a place to live, it was very difficult," Young said, describing his properties as safe havens. "The first day you get out is scary. You don't know what's going to happen to you."
Florida law requires a 1,000-foot buffer between registered sex offenders and schools, day-care centers, parks, churches or libraries. Finding that kind of location -- as well as a willing landlord -- can be tricky.
A report by FLORIDA TODAY last year found that sex offenders in the county tend to live in clusters because of the difficulty in finding housing.
Young, convicted of molesting a teen boy in 2003 in Volusia County, could not move in with his mother because her home was close to a church. He said he even was rejected by what he called the "crack" hotels of Orlando's Orange Blossom Trail. Then he found a trailer in the middle of nowhere.
While attending therapy session for sex offenders, Young made friends with several other men who had experienced similar problems. Some were staying at a hotel, but they were forced to move because a day care center was opening nearby.
"I let them move into my trailer," he said. "They were good tenants."
One thing led to another, and Young found himself in a growing business. He lives in his only Brevard property, another trailer in Cocoa, with roommate offenders.
He said he's pursuing more property in Brevard.
"I get calls from all over for help," he said. "Landlords call me, people in foreclosure call me and parents of children getting out of prison call me for help."
Clusters useful
Child safety advocate Kevin Gillick publishes a newspaper devoted to the whereabouts of sexual offenders in the county. He said registered offenders living close together may not be a bad thing.
"I think generally it's probably easier to better supervise them when they live in one place," he said.
But Gillick also said no one should feel sorry because offenders have it tough.
"I wonder if their victims have housing," he said. "I wonder if the victims have a higher rate of homelessness than they do."
Lt. Tod Goodyear, who heads the Brevard County Sheriff's Office Sex Crimes unit, said it's not uncommon for offenders to cluster. But he said he doesn't like what Young is doing.
"He brings in people from out of the county that normally would not be settling in Brevard," Goodyear said. "I also don't like that he's making money off of this because he knows the system as a sex offender."
Group support
Young said he turns a profit, but isn't getting rich.
He said it's most important for him to be a good neighbor, and his rules are strict: no drinking; no children on the property, even for visitation rights; no smokings; shirts required when leaving the house.
"Some guys hate me because of the rules," he said. "But sex offenders do much better in group situations. They can share their feeling and new experiences and help each other much like Alcoholics Anonymous."
Big buffer zones
In recent years, some municipalities have made it tougher for offenders. In South Florida, for example, some cities and at least two counties have raised the buffer-zone requirements from 1,000 feet to 2,500 feet.
This, according to Lynn University Assistant Professor Jill Levenson, has created a transient and homeless population of sex offenders. The college is in Boca Raton.
On his Web site, www.housingforsexoffenders.com, Young boasts being able to find living conditions for offenders anywhere in the state.
"Our friendly and exceptional service sets us apart from others offering roach-infested, run-down motels and overcrowded, roach-infested mobile homes," it states. "Other companies cannot meet our extensive resources and long-standing relationships with the community." ..Source.. by JOHN A. TORRES • FLORIDA TODAY
July 21, 2009
FL- Housing for sex offenders
7-21-2009 Florida:
Registered sex offender Randy Young bought the single wide mobile home at 382 Akorn Street when it went into foreclosure. He lives there and rents rooms to two other registered sex offenders.
"I get nervous about the children. I get nervous when we have the grandchild staying over and I get nervous about the girl across the street,” said Bill Hammel, who has owned the home next door for 15 years. "I still haven't found out who owns the place," Hammel added.
When FOX 35 told Hammel that a man named Randy Young, a registered sex offender, was the owner, he couldn't believe it. "That surprises me,” he said. “Shocks me actually."
FOX 35 discovered that Young has made a business out of finding homes for sex offenders. Just check his website, HousingForSexOffenders.com . We watched as Brevard County Sheriff's Lt. Tod Goodyear saw the website for the first time.
"Our biggest concern is he's bringing offenders in from out of county," said Lt. Goodyear, adding to the 700 registered sex offenders already living in Brevard County.
In a phone interview, Young told FOX 35 that he has more than forty homes which he either owns or is leasing, subletting rooms to registered sex offenders. In some of those homes, as many as four registered sex offenders are living under one roof. He considers these homes "safe havens for sex offenders."
"It’s a service that's needed. Just got a call from a lady living in a car," said Young. He also told FOX 35 that when he was released from prison after serving his sentence, his mother had a hard time finding him a place to live. He added that what was available was substandard.
"He's a registered sex offender. He knows what’s out there and knows what's available and the restrictions. He's using that as an advantage," said Lt. Tod Goodyear as he continued looking through Young's website.
July 19, 2009
FL- Businessman finds homes for other sex offenders
7-19-2009 Florida:
Habitat for Sex Offenders.com angers neighbors
Randy Young calls himself "a Robin Hood" for Florida's sex offenders. Neighbors say he ruins communities.
For about three years, Young has been buying and renting houses, condos and trailers throughout the state and leasing them as "habitats" for registered sex offenders.
He targets properties, often in foreclosure, within the few remaining zones where convicted sex offenders can legally live in Florida. He once ran an entire trailer park for sex offenders in Orange County and was cited for cramming 24 men into a three-bedroom house in central Broward County.
"I am providing a service people need," said Young, 53, a registered sex offender himself. "In the world of sex offenders, it's either a mattress inside a room with other offenders, or living under a bridge."
But for the neighbors living next door, Young's business is a nightmare.
"He has no respect for us, and no shame for what he's done," said Wilfredo LLantos, whose family lives next to a home Young owned in the Broadview Park neighborhood in unincorporated Broward.
Young's business model is straightforward. He advertises his house-hunting services as "Habitat for Sex Offenders" on his website, Housingforsexoffenders.com. The website also helps match visitors with "sex offender friendly" attorneys, counselors and employers.
Young is registered as living and working from Cocoa, and as living part-time in Broward, St. Petersburg and Zephyrhills in central Florida. An accountant by training, he once owned an upholstery business.
He was convicted in 2003 in Volusia County of lewd or lascivious conduct on a minor and was sentenced to 11 months of incarceration and seven years of probation. He is labeled a sex offender for life. He says a teenager had sex with an adult at a party at his house.
Young declined to say where his homes are located, fearing neighbors and local officials would torment his company and tenants. Over the past three years, he said, he has purchased 15 Florida homes and found housing for about 300 sex offenders.
He says he charges from $400 a month for a mattress-size flop to $1,000 for a private room. He declined to say how much money he makes, but says it's not much. He describes himself as a soft touch.
"A lot of these guys can't find jobs," Young said. "So many of the times they just give me 20 bucks, and I let them stay until they can find somewhere else."
Corrections officials said they don't keep track of how many houses Young runs, but are aware of several in South Florida and Central Florida, including in Orlando and Cocoa. At one point, Young operated an trailer park in Orange County called Lake Shore Village Mobile Home Park. Young said he sold park after neighbors and local authorities started to crack down on his business.
Young routinely e-mails probation officers listings of his available housing and they, in turn, give the lists to the sex offenders they supervise, to help them find places to live, state officials said.
Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said her department, which supervises sex offenders on probation, takes no position on Young's business venture. It's all legal as long as the homes meet local codes and are outside the restricted boundaries.
"It's a [probationer's] responsibility to find housing," she said. "They give us an address, and all we do is tell them whether or not it's legal for them to live there."
Neighbors in Broward's Broadview Park know the locations of at least two of Young's homes. The neighborhood, less than a square mile, is one of the last few legal areas left for sex offenders in the county. Ninety-two registered offenders live there.
Earlier this year, Young rented 24 sex offenders space in a three-bedroom house at the 4100 block of SW 22 Street. Broward officials cited him for code violations, and now the home has five residents.
Several blocks away on 44th Terrace, Young purchased a foreclosed home for $48,000 in March and turned it into what he calls a "professional house" exclusively for offenders with professional jobs.
One of his tenants, a former medical researcher, says he heard about Young's place about a year ago through the sex offender grapevine. With a 2007 conviction for lewd or lascivious molestation of a minor, the tenant insisted on being identified only by his initials. He said he feared repercussions to himself and his family.
"I really wouldn't have a place to live if it wasn't for him," M.L. said of Young. "This is like any other home anywhere. We don't bother anyone, and nobody bothers us. We all have the right to live somewhere."
M.L. pays Young $500 a month for his own bedroom in the 3,500-square-foot home he shares with three other men. The neatly kept house was recently refurbished with a new tile floor and a new kitchen. It has a pool, a hot tub, and a line of palm trees in the yard.
The home has been a nightmare for next-door neighbor Heinz Bodmer. Bodmer, who has lived there since the 1970s, says he wants to move, but can't.
"Real estate is a bust. I can't sell my house, much less with all these creeps running around," Bodmer said. "I can sell it to Young, but he'll probably only offer me a couple thousand dollars." ..Source.. by Ihosvani Rodriguez South Florida Sun-Sentinel
July 9, 2009
FL- A fading oasis for sex offenders in Broward County
Any reasonable review of just the maps shows, that the intent is BANISHMENT as both a residency laws and proximity laws protects ONLY those WITHIN the protected place (i.e., school, day care, playground, etc.) and overwhelming studies show, those places ARE NOT where over 93% of kids are sexually abused. Kids are sexually abused by family, friends and acquaintances in homes not in these protected places.
However, the MAJOR portion of the sex offenses committed WITHIN these protected places are committed by employees of those places. Residency laws AND proximity laws are inherently flawed by the logic (or failure of logic) of the law. These laws are TOOLS of FURTHER PUNISHMENT by banishing offenders from areas (protected places) where sex offenses are overwhelmingly caused by employees of those places and not by people living in close proximity to these places.
7-9-2009 Florida:
Broward County considers law to further restrict where sex offenders may move:
The man with glasses and a Miami Dolphins ball cap peeks out the window as Graciela Ortiz stands in the middle of the street with a stack of photographs and pages of scribbled notes.
"The one in that house molested a little girl," she says, pointing toward the man's home. "And there's three living in that house over there."
Thumbing through a stack of sex offender fliers, she adds, "This is ground zero for sick perverts."
In the past few months, Ortiz has become especially familiar with 14 of the closest neighbors on her block. They are all registered sex offenders.
Ortiz, 53, whose three young grandchildren live next door to her, has spent her life in this mostly Hispanic, working-class neighborhood in unincorporated Broward County: Broadview Park, an area near State Road 7 and Interstate 595, surrounded by Plantation, Davie and Fort Lauderdale.
Her description is accurate, at least by the numbers. The neighborhood that covers only 1 square mile is home to 92 registered sex offenders, giving it the highest concentration of offenders in Broward, officials said.
They say this clustering evolved over the past three years as nearly every Broward city raced to adopt laws restricting areas that sex offenders and predators can move into.
Broadview Park is the largest of three small pockets left in unincorporated Broward where offenders can legally find a home. Ortiz's block is in an area of low-rent duplexes, a trailer park and several industrial businesses.
A constant parade of pedestrians wander the area to and from a nearby bus stop on State Road 7. In the neighborhood, there are children, but they are kept inside -- it's rare to see toys scattered outside a house.
Broward commissioners in April issued an emergency ordinance that bars any more offenders from moving into Broadview Park or two smaller unincorporated neighborhoods. Before the ordinance expires in October, commissioners will debate whether to make it permanent. Such a move could help Broadview Park, but also could turn more sex offenders into homeless wanderers who are hard to monitor.
The dilemma: Nobody wants sex offenders living next door, but everyone wants to keep an eye on them.
High demand
With 1,275 registered sex offenders in Broward, the demand for neighborhoods like Broadview Park is great.
Until April, when the temporary rule kicked in, "For Rent" signs were rarely up for more than a week, with offenders moving in as quickly as units hit the market.
The neighborhood was such a haven for sex offenders that one business-savvy offender, Randy Young, set up group homes, including a five-bedroom on Southwest 44th Terrace that once housed 24 offenders.
"Business has snowballed," Young said recently. "I have doctors, I have probation officers, I have public defenders all calling me every day to find out if I have a place for someone."
Broadview Park neighbors got wind of Young's homes and complained to county officials, who cited him for code violations. Now, only five offenders are registered as living in the 44th Terrace house, records show.
"I basically had to tell some of these guys to go find a bridge or a palm tree to call home," said Young. That's what worries opponents of strict residential requirements for offenders.
"This is not an issue of feeling sympathetic for sex offenders," said Jill Levenson, a Lynn University professor and chairwoman of a 13-member County Commission task force studying the issue. "We're looking at an issue where every solution creates another problem."
Levenson and others point to Miami-Dade County, where housing for offenders has been all but eliminated. The Julia Tuttle Causeway serves as a roof for 68 of them.
As of June, Miami-Dade had 175 sex offenders listed as "transients." Broward County had 29; Palm Beach County had 21. Authorities do not know the whereabouts of 47 Broward offenders who have not reported their addresses, so they are classified as "absconded."
'We need to know where they are'
A growing number of detractors, including some advocates for sexual abuse victims, think the Broward ordinance would only create more sex offender ghettos inside the few remaining cities, such as Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Miramar, that still have legal room left in residential areas.
Twenty-four of Broward's 31 cities have adopted ordinances banning offenders from moving near schools, parks, playgrounds, day care centers and school bus stops. Most used 2,500 feet for the buffer zones. Some added libraries, skating rinks, churches and sports fields -- other places children frequent -- effectively blanketing the entire city.
If Broward commissioners adopt the 2,500-foot rule, only four units will be available in unincorporated Broward. Those four are in a trailer park area of Broadview Park.
The county's task force, including a therapist, law enforcement officials, city commissioners, victim advocates and even a sex offender, last week delivered a broad set of recommendations to commissioners. But after nearly two months of meetings, task force members have been unable to agree on residential boundaries that are off limits for sex offenders.
Lauren Book-Lim, a sex abuse victim on the task force, wants the number reduced to 1,750 feet. She favors establishing "child safety" zones where offenders would be arrested if they are caught loitering near children.
"The main concern is that we don't want them absconding. We need to know where they are always," said Book-Lim, 24, daughter of lobbyist Ron Book.
But that's not acceptable for Broadview Park residents like Jan Washburn, 82, who want the 2,500-foot rule adopted permanently -- even if it promotes homelessness and makes sex offenders harder to monitor.
"We feel like we're in the grip of a pit bull that won't let go," said Washburn. "I am not for making people homeless, but a small neighborhood shouldn't bear the burden of an entire county." ..Source.. By Ihosvani Rodriguez South Florida Sun-Sentinel
April 19, 2009
FL- Tougher laws leave sex offenders with no options
4-19-2009 Florida:
Here's where most respectable people want convicted sex offenders to live: Anywhere but near them.
Here's where sex offenders are allowed to live, after a wave of get-tough residency restrictions imposed by South Florida localities: Almost nowhere.
And here's where George Horne has lived most of the last six months since being released from prison: Beneath a roadway overpass, overlooking a canal, surrounded by broken glass and forced to sleep with a stick to beat back rats.
Sex offenders don't usually evoke much sympathy, but is this really what we want in a civilized society?
"I'm living like an animal," Horne, 46, said last week. "I had it much better in prison."
I first met Horne in December, when he showed off the mattress he fashioned from a piece of Styrofoam that fell off a truck.
I found him again last week, after he was evicted from a flop house for sex offenders in the unincorporated Broadview Park neighborhood.
Following the lead of other cities and counties, Broward County Click here for restaurant inspection reports commissioners last week enacted tougher restrictions for unincorporated areas. Sex offenders won't be able to live within 2,500 feet of schools, parks, playgrounds or school bus stops. Current resident offenders might be grandfathered in.
Horne, who spent eight years behind bars for a sexual battery on his girlfriend's young daughter he says he didn't commit, is caught in the crossfire.
Longtime Broadview Park residents watched in horror in recent months as the number of sex offenders grew from a few dozen to more than 100. The neighborhood is bordered by State Road 7, Interstate 595 and Florida's Turnpike.
"We don't want this to become Pervert Park," said Lee Charbonneau, who's lived there 10 years.
She told me her story: One night earlier this year, her dog began barking when a Lee County sheriff's cruiser pulled up in her driveway. The deputy wanted to drop off a sex offender who'd been released from jail.
"He had the wrong address," Charbonneau said.
That's how she discovered a haven for sex offenders had sprouted on her block. An enterprising offender from Orlando, Randy Young, bought a foreclosed home. Soon there were 14 people living there.
Young set up other houses in the neighborhood, including a five-bedroom house that crammed in 25 offenders. According to one offender, they each paid $500 a month. After code enforcement became involved, only five offenders live there.
Horne spent six weeks at that house but was evicted last week.
Horne said he was steered to the overpass by his probation officer after his Nov. 1 release. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections said probation officers try to assist in finding housing, but there's often no place for offenders to go. "It's a very difficult situation," said Gretl Plessinger.
With more like Horne on the horizon, Broward might soon have its own Bridge of Shame, like the Julia Tuttle Causeway in Miami-Dade, where nearly 60 sex offenders have set up camp.
How this makes us safer, with more desperate people poised to do desperate things, I have no idea.
"It puts the community at great risk," said Lori Butts, a Davie-based psychologist who counsels sex offenders. She said it's time to rethink the Draconian residency restrictions, saying they are counterproductive and give the people a false sense of security, since unsupervised offenders can roam freely during the day.
"It's not about being sympathetic to sex offenders. It's about doing what's best for the community," Butts said.
Broward County Commissioner John Rodstrom said the county is exploring allowing halfway houses in industrial areas.
There has to be a reasonable medium between offenders descending on certain neighborhoods, living 25 to a single-family home, and living beneath bridges like animals. ..News Source.. by Michael Mayo
