| HeraldNet - Snohomish County's online news source |
 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2010 5:05 am |
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Local News 
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Sex offender housing panel sought for Everett An attorney for Everett recommends a task force to deal with frustrations of neighbors. EVERETT -- The city should form a task force to examine sex offender housing and prepare a report to send to state lawmakers, an Everett deputy city attorney told the City Council on Wednesday.The attorney, David Hall, offered the advice during a briefing on community fears about sex offenders moving into what is called the McManus mansion in the Riverside neighborhood. "Anything we can do can't hurt," City Councilwoman Brenda Stonecipher said. "I know the city of Everett has tried to approach the Legislature on these issues in the past, but requests have fallen on deaf ears." Hall said the task force should include Everett residents as well as city officials. Such a group could examine issues such as the concentration of sex offenders in a given neighborhood, sex offender notification and zoning rules. A state law passed in 2006 prohibited local jurisdictions from enacting zoning rules that dictate where registered sex offenders can live. The law was passed after Monroe, Steilacoom and Issaquah created their own zoning rules regarding where sex offenders live. The issue came to a head in Everett earlier this summer when a former Seattle police officer bought the McManus mansion and rented out a room to a high-risk sex offender. The offender has since gone back to jail after he was caught drinking alcohol, a violation of his parole. Alex Thole is a business partner with Mike Westford, who owns several properties around Everett and rents to dozens of sex offenders. Westford has plans to tear down his rental houses in the Bayside neighborhood, and neighbors across town in the Riverside neighborhood fear he will start buying houses and renting to sex offenders near their homes. Westford says he might rent to sex offenders, but his primary goal is to provide housing for people recovering from drug and alcohol addictions. While sex offenders are not a protected group, people recovering from drug and alcohol addictions are considered disabled and therefore protected from discrimination under the federal Fair Housing Act. That means communities can't create zoning rules to keep them out of certain neighborhoods. Westford's opponents say he is savvy and merely hiding behind federal housing rules to thwart attempts to regulate his enterprise. Westford, who hangs the Ten Commandments outside his rental properties and who says he is a devout Christian, says he is providing affordable housing for people who otherwise would be homeless. At the meeting on Wednesday, Ric Rosales, a community corrections supervisor with the state Department of Corrections, said he understands the concern about placing many sex offenders in a single neighborhood. Putting too many sex offenders in a single place could cause backlash from the public and make landlords less willing to rent to anyone who has been convicted of a sex crime. He referred to convicted rapist David J. Torrence, whom the Department of Corrections in April outfitted with a GPS tracking device and ordered to sleep under a bridge because he had no place to live. Torrence removed the device, fled the state but surrendered a couple of weeks later in Arkansas. Reporter David Chircop: 425-3393429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com. |
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