By Dean Narciso, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
March 21--Homeowners associations increasingly are seeking to ban sexual offenders and predators in an attempt to improve safety and maintain property values.
"There's an explosion in Franklin County," said David W. Kaman, a lawyer with Kaman and Cusimano, which specializes in association law.
A 2003 state law and more-restrictive municipal laws already prohibit Tier 3 sexual predators -- those convicted of the most-serious sex crimes -- from living within 1,000 feet of sensitive areas such as schools, playgrounds and day-care centers.
The association laws are far more restrictive, however, and are considered outright bans intended to protect higher-density areas, such as condominium communities, said Kaman. He recently met with 40 associations in Delaware County's Genoa Township to discuss the issue and has meetings scheduled with 40 more in Springfield and nine in Westerville in late April.
In the past six years, 30 Tier 3 sexual offenders have been denied entry to association-run communities in Ohio, without a single legal challenge, Kaman said.
It's an issue associations are considering now because a new state law requires them to file their bylaws with county recorders or lose their ability to enforce them.
"It opened up some eyes," Diana Howell, president of the 47-home Lake of the Woods homeowners association in Genoa Township, said of the law change and Kaman's presentation.
"The Realtors check the neighborhoods for offenders. And that's an issue if you have one living next door to you," she said, citing a study showing that property values can drop about 17 percent in neighborhoods where sexual offenders live.
"I know I would not move in next door to a sexual predator. And I'm assuming that as a member of society, that there are other people a lot like me," she said.
"I think we're going to see more of this," said Charles T. Williams, a partner in Williams & Strohm, which also represents homeowners associations. "I think people are very, very concerned about personal safety and their security."
Critics of the bans say they violate offenders' civil rights and amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
"It's an understandable outflow from the notification provisions, where you get a postcard if you're living within 1,000 feet of a registered sex offender," said Stephen Johnson Grove, deputy director for policy at the Cincinnati-based Ohio Justice and Policy Center, an advocate for prisoners' rights.
But eliminating housing or jobs from offenders "is really a damage to our communities," he said. "If people can't get housing, none of us are safer."
He said the vast majority of sex offenders know their victims. Often they're related, or are in a position of trust, such as a teacher, coach, clergy member or youth leader.
Howell isn't sympathetic.
"It's also cruel what they've done to be labeled what they are," she said of offenders. "They've got rights; we have rights."
The 2,400 homes in Dublin's Muirfield Association don't have restrictions against people convicted of sex crimes, but residents have discussed them, said Walter Zeier, general manager of the association. "It's a huge concern."
Association members have been told that 100 percent of the voting residents would need to approve a rule change. "Our deed doesn't have provisions to change it," he said.
Zeier also worries about potential legal challenges.
"It shocks me that no one has challenged it here," he said, when told that such laws have been challenged, unsuccessfully, only in New Jersey.
Johnson Grove said he thinks that courts would uphold the restrictions.
Constitutional laws are "a limit on the powers of government, not on (homeowners associations)," he said.
dnarciso@dispatch.com
