6/10/2024-LAST DAY to COMMENT-FAC Weekly Update 2024-06-02 -HUD Proposal Could Reduce Homeless-Comment Today!
Please note that the responses are due by June 10, 2024
Dear Members and Advocates,
The number one problem that we hear, and experience, is finding stable housing for persons forced to register (PFR). The lack of housing is a huge concern and we have the chance to make a significant change…TODAY!
The Federal office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is proposing an effort to loosen restrictions on federal housing assistance for more people, with criminal backgrounds, to be provided stable housing. Specifically, the rule change asks landlords to assess each person individually and take into account facts such as the amount of time the applicant has been offense-free, but also adds “removed from the sex offender registry.”
Unfortunately, the requirement to be “removed from the registry” would not change the existing rule for most PFR in Florida and other states where they are subject to lifetime registration.
We are reaching out to each of you today with a very quick Call to Action (CTA).
This CTA is simply a response to a Federal Register posting at Reducing Barriers to HUD-Assisted Housing. It is much shorter and less detailed than our other CTAs. We are more concerned with having large numbers of people submitting short responses (especially because it’s an election year) so HUD will know that the public is concerned with the lack of housing for all returning citizens and want people with all convictions to have access to HUD housing.
You do not need to write a lengthy response. You can let HUD know in just a sentence or two. Let’s make HUD understand that while this expansion is a step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough. Housing should be available for everyone, and those who have served their sentence and returned to the community deserve to be considered for housing on a case-by-case basis without blanket exclusions.
Of course, we are encouraged to do a more detailed response if desired, but we don’t want that to stop someone from responding. There is 25 years of Metadata studies showing the low, low recidivism rates of people with sex offense convictions, having rearrest rates for another sex offense between 2% and 5% in federal and as low as 1% in some states.
One of our members commented: “This rule change is a step in the right direction, but housing help needs to be available to everyone!” That one, simple sentence is enough. Everyone has time to send a short response.
Please note that the responses are due by June 10, 2024. You don’t have to register, or submit a lot of personal information, just an email address — which will not be posted publicly. You can also choose “Anonymous” as the commenter type if you do not want your name to appear.
To post your comment, go to the web page: Reducing Barriers to HUD-Assisted Housing. You can view alternative ways to comment or you may also comment via Regulations.gov at https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/HUD-2024-0031-0001.
Once you have filled in the required fields you can preview and/or submit your comment to the Housing and Urban Development Department for review. All comments are considered public and will be posted online once the Housing and Urban Development Department has reviewed them.
Thank you for your advocacy. Please comment and feel free to copy and paste this request to send to friends, family, and other advocacy groups.
Take Action Today!
Sincerely,
The Florida Action Committee (FAC)
I was at registration today and it was packed. There was a guy I struck up a conversation and he told me he had just become homeless. He usually has to register twice a year but when he told the Sheriff’s office registration clerk he was homeless, she said as long as he is homeless, he would have to register once a week and if he misses a registration, he would be arrested.
Just wow!
Wow, I seen in polk county sheriff’s office, it says every 48 hours you have to re-register as homeless or face punishment and also the pay 5 bucks every single time. Extortion is what it is. Sadly I gave my body to destroy in corporate 500 company because of this and then surgeon installed incorrectly in spine. Now if I could find a country I can’t provide myself a living. Smh
I saw that in Volusia County. Somehow being homeless put you more at risk for a registry violation. But then I lived at a motel down from the Branch County Jail where sometimes homeless registrants hid in the laundry room to have a residence. The three years I spent trapped at that motel traumatized me worse than seventeen months in Wewahitchka
Packed with sex offenders but not a single one offered to take in the homeless sex offender?
If you are on probation (federal) you can not associate, hang out, with other felons so you would be unable to take anyone in. Not sure what state probation says about that.
That motel was overbooked. Eight of the rooms were double occupancy, with no kitchen. The one room other than the manager’s with a kitchen, had anywhere from six to eight people sleeping in it. There were five beds. It was difficult to help someone who hadn’t been vetted by the owner. VCSO was there or probation for that matter, every day for some reason or another. There was a registrant murdered in his room while I was there. the situation was difficult.
Something is wrong there and needs to be addressed. Transient registration is every 30 days (not even once a month but 30 days). What county is telling him he has to register weekly?
From my experience, this was Volusia County three years ago. I can’t say if VCSO/probation still has people doing that weekly check.
I hate to change the subject, but back on May 30th, Ron DeSantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, led a hate-filled attack against me in Twitter over a post in which I used the term Person Forced to Register. So the right wingers really despise our new term. All the more reason to use it repeatedly.
@Derek
Well, we sure as Hell are not registering on our own will. When you are doing something you don’t want to do or shouldn’t have to do, that is forcing someone to do that thing.
So yeah, I do not think there is anyone in America who wants to willingly register as an offender. So we are being forced to register. I was never sentenced to registration and it did not even exist when my crime occurred.
They say it is not punishment but tell that to those who have had their homes set on fire, have lost jobs, been beaten up, had their tires slashed, had dog crap thrown in our driveways, and the list go on.
While I am here in Virginia it would seem that Florida is encroaching on a persons liberty before and after the facts. Are we all guilty? or have many been conned in a lot of these entrapment’s. This housing for those ex felons whether as some say (forced to register or coerced to register is a type of game changer. Sp who defines evil or wicked in all this Fools Parade of unworthy greed in human understanding and reasoning..
If I was down and out I would self commit to a nut house if that’s the case. There’s many here in Virginia that are down and out. Court systems like many other systems one has to care about others. When courts and other systems toss forceful measures on another than there is no true justice in America.
This is a housing question. I currently own a home and it’s “approved” for me to live in by the county. I may have to look for a new home soon. In Palm Bach we used to have the S.O.L.L. ( sex offender living locator ). It was on the sheriffs website and you were able to type any address in and verify that it’s “ok” to live there. It has been removed for unknown reasons and subsequently I’m not sure how to “verify” a location before considering it as a new home. Does anyone know any app or website or software that I could use to perhaps perform the same function as the S.O.L.L.?
I’m not in an emergent situation, I just may need to downsize my home and again not sure exactly how to go about doing this.
I used the s.o. database to cross reference potential areas of residence. Use it to your advantage in this instance. Good luck!