Suffolk County officials are at an impasse over ways to best shelter homeless sex offenders while still keeping them away from the public.
While legislators approved a resolution Tuesday to have more than 40 homeless sex offenders moved from their current digs in Southampton trailers to mini-shelters throughout the county, County Executive Steve Levy promised to veto it and continue backing a hotel-voucher plan. Under the resolution, area residents would not know where the offenders were being moved to until they were already placed.
Legislator Ed Romaine, R-Center Moriches, said Levy’s voucher plan, which pays for hotel accommodation, is only “marginally better” than the two bare-bones East End trailers where the sex offenders are currently required to report each night. The proposal from Community Housing Innovations from Westchester County calls for the “scattered site housing” in industrial areas, he said, which would eliminate the costly and inequitable clustering of homeless perps.
Dan Aug, Levy’s director of communications, said the voucher plan has proven successful and efficient in Nassau and Westchester counties. He said that CHI would not notify local communities prior to building housing, which would “end in litigation and a lot of community unrest.”
