I took the plunge back into the home buyers market, except this time, weighed down by the burden of residency restrictions due to my family member's designation as a sex offender.
The Internet is a great tool for "walking through" houses online sans realtor, who would likely grow suspicious about continued disinterest in seemingly great homes. Once I saw something that looked decent, I'd google map the address against all possible off-limit areas and then jump in the car to physically drive by the place, measuring distance via my car odometer. It took about three months, but his method turned up three legal houses of interest. Before contacting a realtor, I contacted local law enforcement to officially okay the possible choices.
One house out of the three met the restriction as stipulated by current state law.
One.
Believe it or not, it was a pretty great house, but the police asked us if we knew undesirables (homeless) often camped in the woods across the street. (Hugely ironic, as a) "undesirable" is term is usually reserved for my family member and b) the law put us there, segregating our home search to certain areas of town.
All bets were on this house. We had to like the place, it had to pass a home inspection and of course, the seller had to accept our offer.
After the seller turned down our first offer, we went back and gave her full price, knowing we had no choice due to the limitations imposed, all the while, keeping our fingers crossed that the place wouldn't be sold out from under us. Thankfully, the "undesirables" helped out in the end as the offer was accepted without any competing offers. The home loan went through as well as the closing and we breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Here's the punchline. If the law had stipulated an oft cited potential distance of 1750 feet--instead of the current state law of 1000 feet--a park located around 1200 ft. would've disqualified our new home as a possibility.
I would like to add, that if my children had been of school-age, my new neighborhood would not have been the best as far as neighborhood schools and the area of town is, let us say, "tired". Day labor is within a mile, so lots of foot (and men on bicycles) traffic travel through the neighborhood. My twenty-something son stumbled across a man unconscious on the sidewalk a couple of weeks back. My point is that many young kids are placed in similar unsafe situations because one of their parents is relegated to living within this law.
I want to keep these kids safe as well.
I've been involved long enough to know reforms won't change overnight. But I will say, the public has been very much educated on what constitutes a "sex offender" as more and more "typical" citizens find themselves (and their families) involved in these laws.
While most continue to stick their heads under a bridge and have failed to take responsibility for the collateral damage associated with these laws, I challenge Florida lawmakers to step back and question how better to address the issue before them now.
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SB 1284 is listed on Committee Agenda for 3/23/2010, 1:00 PM, 412-K.
The bill preempts certain local ordinances related to residency limitations and provides for repeal of such ordinances.
The bill preempts certain local ordinances related to residency limitations and provides for repeal of such ordinances.
