Joliet aims to stop sex offender house

The city of Joliet on Tuesday announced it will try to shut down an apartment house opened for five sex offenders in a residential neighborhood and will attempt to put a moratorium on all housing for social services.

The statement came out after residents in the Cunningham Neighborhood discovered the new use for the apartment building in the 1000 block of Cora Street and pushed city officials to do something.

Cunningham Neighborhood Council President John Sheridan said he sent an email to the city manager on Friday morning citing state statutes concerning sex offender housing and had not received a response before the city issued its statement.

“I sent them a copy of the Illinois statute for Department of Corrections that clearly states no more than one sex offender apartment building or in a condo building unless they’re in some form of transitional program,” Sheridan said.

The city appears to be pursuing that legal route.

The city said in a news release that it believes the owner of the property has entered into a contract with the Illinois Department of Corrections that exempts the Cora Street building from a state law prohibiting housing of more than one sex offender at any specific location.

“It is absurd that anyone at any level of government would think this is a good idea,” Mayor Bob O’Dekirk said in the release. “The city’s legal department has been instructed to take all appropriate action to shut this down. I believe placing five sex offenders at one location in any city poses an imminent threat to the people inside that neighborhood.”

O’Dekirk later said he called Gov. JB Pritzker’s office on Tuesday morning to seek help to address the issue and was waiting to hear back.

The mayor said he did not know what success the city would have in trying to get a court order to shut down the house ,but believed it could make a case based on the state statute.

“I think the argument would be that the legislature passed that law because they understood the danger of having more than one sex offender at one location,” O’Dekirk said.

The state law does provide an exemption for transition housing for sex offenders, and Sheridan said the Cora Street building is not transitional housing.

But it is owned by NewDay Apartments, a Lake Zurich company that provides housing for registered sex offenders. The NewDay website says it provides safe, affordable housing to provide registered offenders “with the opportunity to live productive lives rather than repeat past mistakes.”

Sheridan, however, said the Cora Street apartment may violate another state restriction by being less than 500 feet from the nearest playground, which is located outside Holy Cross Catholic Church.

The city news release went beyond taking aim at the sex offender housing and announced a possible moratorium on any housing devoted to providing social services.

It quoted City Manager James Capparelli stating that the issue on Cora Street “goes to the heart of the matter that Joliet has become a dumping ground for Will County communities. This has got to stop, and I will be seeking a moratorium on the expansion of existing social services housing located in Joliet.”

The city in the past two years has blocked two such projects: homeless housing that MorningStar Mission Ministries wanted to put into a Larkin Avenue hotel; and housing for women recovering from opioid addictions. That was proposed by Volunteers of America Illinois for the former Silver Cross Hospital campus.

“This (sex offender) home excluded, I think the other social services all have value and all have merit,” O’Dekirk said. “The question is why is all of it in Joliet?”