It's midday at Juli's Trailer Park in Palm River, and an apprehensive Bill Fuery sits on his couch, finishing a crossword puzzle and watching The Montel Williams Show. Between the angry parents, TV camera crews and visits by Hillsborough County code enforcement officers, the 45-year-old is tired and stressed.
"I haven't been able to sleep at night, because I don't know if I'll have a bed tomorrow," he says, stroking his grey-flecked goatee. "But nobody has been able to tell me what's going on, so I'm going to leave."
Fuery is a sexual predator, a designation for those who have committed one or more felony sex crimes. Fuery was just released from a sex offender treatment facility in Arcadia after a nine-year stint in prison for committing a lewd and lascivious act in front of a child.
"I masturbated in public," he explains. "It could have been kids, it could've been adults, I didn't care."
(Five years prior, Fuery was arrested for attempted sexual battery on a minor.)
A week ago, Fuery moved to this trailer park off 50th Street in Palm River and right into one of the biggest controversies to hit this East Hillsborough town in years. Earlier in the month, residents of J&L Mobile Home Park discovered Fuery and eight other sex offenders were living across the street at Juli's. Florida Justice Transitions, a nonprofit group that houses sex offenders, began leasing the park exclusively for offenders in January. (FJT leases a similar, larger park in Pinellas County.) For weeks, residents and county officials have tripped over each other trying to evict the offenders.
"I tried to rebuild myself the day those prison gates shut," Fuery says. "I'm better. I'm not a danger to society anymore."
But society doesn't feel the same way. Especially the people who live across the street.
Elisha Grubbs and Carla Bowling sit on lawn chairs in front of their trailer at the J&L Mobile Home Park, monitoring the comings and goings at Juli's. They carry digital cameras and shoot pictures of any car that leaves or enters.
"[The police] can't supervise them all the time," says Grubbs, who has a 14-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter. "When are [the sex offenders] going to screw up? When nobody's looking. And me and Carla are watching."
On March 6, Grubbs, Bowling and other Palm River residents pleaded to Hillsborough County commissioners to evict the men, but county officials couldn't find any broken laws. With pressure mounting, county code enforcement cited Florida Justice Transitions for having a "group home" in a residential area. The nonprofit planned to appeal the zoning technicality, but last week, the owners of the trailer park ended the nonprofit's lease. The sex offenders have 30 days to leave.
Neighbors claimed victory; politicians racked up a few more political points. But missing from headlines was the lingering dilemma: Where would these men go?
Finding housing for sex offenders is a growing problem, according to the Florida Department of Corrections and other law enforcement officials. And some studies and advocates say the farther away we push sex offenders, the less safe we become.
"Putting sex offenders in a desperate situation makes for desperate people," writes Nancy Morais, founder of Florida Justice Transitions, in an e-mail to CL. "This is not good, but my cries to our politicians go unheard."
As counties across Florida pass tougher residency restrictions, it's increasingly difficult for sex offenders to find housing, says Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Jo Ellyn Rackleff. With 120 different local ordinances restricting where sex offenders live, she says, situations like the one in Palm River are "becoming more prevalent."
It's also forcing sex offenders to move to less-restrictive counties like Hillsborough and Pinellas.
In Hillsborough County, where nearly 1,500 sex offenders reside, there are still areas, largely low-income and rural, where sex offenders can live. But in crowded Pinellas County, the options are more limited.
"There are not a lot of places in Pinellas County [to house sex offenders], because we're so densely populated," says Sgt. Judy Vovan of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Sexual Predator/Offender Tracking office. "Nobody wants a trailer park or apartment complex that has clusters of sex offenders."
Of the 1,349 sex offenders in Pinellas County, about 100 of them live at the Palace Mobile Home Park in Lealman, managed by Florida Justice Transitions.
"You're pushing people under the bridge," says James Broderick, a resident and transitions director for the park. "You're pushing people out from where they're being monitored."
Recent studies conducted by the corrections departments of Minnesota and Colorado found that housing restrictions have a marginal effect on sex offenders' recidivism rates and in fact could prevent a stable reintegration into society.
But county officials are moving in the opposite direction. Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken White is already working to expand the county's ordinances.
"Hillsborough County has unfortunately become a dumping ground and a magnet for these offenders and predators," he says. "I don't want these offenders and predators close to any children in our community."
As of press time, four of the eight sex offenders at Juli's Mobile Home Park had been placed in housing provided by Florida Justice Transitions. The other four will have to find a place on their own. But even if these men find housing elsewhere in the county, Morais of FJT says the larger problem remains.
"The communities, not only in Tampa but within all our counties and states, need to come up with a better solution in minding the offenders once they come out," she writes.
Even Palm River moms Grubbs and Bowling concede this. Their solution? Someone should donate some rural property far away from children where the offenders could live.
But that's not an easy proposition, Grubbs admits.
"Who is going to want to help sexual predators?"
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2008.