Suffolk County tries trailers to house sex offenders

Struggling to find housing for homeless sex offenders, a suburban county has started putting up some offenders temporarily in trailers that will be shuttled around nonresidential neighborhoods. Suffolk County started placing offenders in a trailer earlier this month, at a county-paid cost of $85 per person per night, officials said. Plans call for housing as many as eight registered sex offenders in each of multiple trailers and moving them among various undisclosed locations, officials said. [...]

Homeless offenders have previously stayed temporarily at motels, but that has met with community opposition, social service officials said. County officials see the trailer plan as a way to keep better track of the offenders and keep them out of residential areas. "Finding housing resources for sex offenders in nonresidential areas is very difficult, so the trailer allows us to create housing in a nonresidential area," said county Department of Social Services Commissioner Janet DeMarzo. The trailers will probably be placed on county-owned land in areas between that lie between residential and commercial or industrial areas, DeMarzo said.

source: Article 'Suffolk County Tries Trailers To House Sex Offenders'; www.wnbc.com/news/11031388/detail.html; wnbc.com; 16 February 2007