Council begins talks on sex offender restrictions

City Council took the first step Monday toward an ordinance that could restrict where registered sex offenders live, requiring them to live a certain distance from schools, churches and parks and preventing clusters of offenders from living in residential neighborhoods. "You don't have alcoholics living next to a liquor store, and you certainly don't want to have five or six sex offenders living in a neighborhood with children," Andy Kahan with the mayor's crime victims office told KTRK. "That's what I've seen when I monitor the facilities."

Victims' advocates have been pushing for an ordinance restricting where registered sex offenders may live for years — and offenders really do live near places where kids gather. According to Channel 13's ultra-modern Crime Tracker, there are 3,606 registered sex offenders living in Houston, and 2,354 of them — that's 65 percent — live within 1,000 feet of schools, parks, bus stops and churches. It sounds like a lot, but we're kind of surprised the number isn't higher: A lot of people live within a thousand feet of one of those places, don't they? A city ordinance could force offenders to move and could also make placed like Kerry Allen's private transitional housing center shift gears: Allen's facility houses three sex offenders among 18 or so parolees across the street from a Boys and Girls Club. Even if a law forces him to get rid of all the parolees, Allen said he would stay in business: "If they make me get rid of all parolees, that's fine," he said. "I'm going to start working with drug addicts and alcoholics like we did when we originally opened this place. Nobody's going to get me to stop helping where help is needed."

City Councilwoman Ada Edwards said an ordinance — especially one that tried to keep concentrations of sex offenders out of neighborhoods — would be hard to enforce. "Where do we stop? I don't think the city has enough money or resources to regulate where everybody lives," she said. Any ordinance is still months away; yesterday's meeting was the first on the topic for council's Public Safety Committee.