Massachusetts Placed Homeless Families in Shelters With Sex Offenders, Report Says

jeffw@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 175 points –
Massachusetts Placed Homeless Families in Shelters With Sex Offenders, Report Says
thedailybeast.com
31

Anyone who has ever been to a homeless shelter knows that it's incredibly dangerous. Even as a big tough-looking guy. There's little to no security or oversight, people actively ODing feet from you, and vultures trying to steal the literal clothes off your back the minute you close your eyes. We need a total overhaul of the homeless system. As it stands, a tent is far safer and more appealing than a shelter.

The amount of sexual assault in shelters is horrifying. And people, even people who aren't conservatives excuse the clearances of tent cities by saying that there are shelters.

But young wealthy liberals keep telling me that homeless people are angels and only need a home, and everything is fixed!

Behind the Bastards this week talked about a plan in Germany to have homeless kids cared for by pedophiles in the 70s-90s. Sex offenders just have really big hearts apparently.

That one was way more deranged. The Senate of Berlin allowed Helmut Kentler to send orphans and other kids that had to be removed from their parents to pedophiles' homes with the logic that since pedophiles "love" children they would treat them better than the average foster family. And it went all the way from the 1960s to the 1990s (which meant that some kids were stuck with the pedophiles until the 2000s because removing them would blow the cover up).

Do they have separate housing for sex offenders?

In general, they aren’t supposed to be with kids

But do they have a separate place for them to go?

Probably not. Which is an issue when you have laws saying “this population can’t be within X feet of children” and then they have to live together

Yeah maybe make separate housing first. Maybe tattoo their foreheads also. Ankle monitor so people are notified when they enter areas they’re not supposed to be in.

I mean, separate shelters exist, it just sounds like they don’t have them or they don’t have spacr

A 2019 audit found that the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities was not regularly checking shelters against the Sex Offender Registry Board, and concluded that the agency had failed to alert families to the presence of sex offenders. Now, they say they check every six months.

In healthcare, we have to check our staff monthly to make sure they haven’t committed Medicare/Medicaid fraud. Just sayin.

How do you do that? I've worked in healthcare for years and don't think we ever did this

Your administration should be checking federal and state exclusion lists. HR might do it or they might contract out. Databases are public, you can literally just look at the federal one on your own if you want: https://exclusions.oig.hhs.gov/

The difference being CMS has the power to create and implement federal regulations, I suppose. There isn't any equivalent federal regulation around homeless shelters, as far as I'm aware.

Maybe I misunderstood the question. I thought you were asking how healthcare organizations check their staff

Yeah, but that's about money and profit, surely we all understand?

If you make it too comfortable they’ll stay too long.

I've seen enough of your comments to know you're being sarcastic but damn, I could imagine some conservatives actually making an argument like this.

So are they saying that homeless shelters should be segregated?

There are special shelters for offenders, yes

Separate but equal I gotcha

Not sure what you’re insinuating? You want sex offenders with kids?

Just curious where this leads. Aren't the kids going to be supervised and with an adult while at the shelter? What about drug dealers convicted for selling to minors? Or convicted murderers? Are sex offenders worse than killers? It makes you scratch your head thinking about where it ends and begins. I have no real feelings either way but it's interesting.