Key takeaways from the Socia analysis on Florida’s sex offender laws

FAC retained Dr. Kelly Socia as one of our experts in our recently filed lawsuit challenging (among other things) Florida’s sex offender residency and proximity restrictions. Dr. Socia is a Professor in the School of Criminology and Justice Studies and a Fellow for the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

He is the author of 50+ scholarly articles on the topic and his research has been published in journals such as Criminology & Public Policy, Crime & Delinquency, Sex Abuse, and Justice Quarterly. He has been certified as an expert in several court cases involving the housing impacts of sex offender residency restrictions across the United States. And he’s our expert!

The report Dr. Socia’s prepared for our case is “Exhibit 3”, which can be read here: https://floridaactioncommittee.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Exhibit3-Socia-Report.pdf

One of the great things about a GIS report and a map is that the facts are indisputable and not subject to interpretation. A foot is a foot. One thousand feet is one thousand feet. A property line is a property line. Dr. Socia’s analysis takes the laws and applies them to the physical geography of the state, allowing us to see their real-world impact without speculation or subjective interpretation. The resulting maps and statistics don’t represent an opinion – they show, with geographic precision, what the laws actually do.

The report is 63 pages, so for those who don’t have the time to read it all, we wanted to share five key takeaways.

• Florida’s prior residency restrictions already eliminated more than a third of the state’s residential property. The new law, which added public pools pushes that to half.

Before public pools were added to the list of restricted locations, the study estimates that 37.6% of Florida’s residential parcels and 43.2% of residential housing units were legally off-limits to people subject to the state residency restriction. With public pools included, those figures jump to 50.0%–52.7% of residential parcels and 56.9%–59.6% of residential units.

In other words, just the Florida law alone (set aside the more onerous Municipal Ordinances for the time being) makes more than half of Florida’s housing stock legally unavailable.

• The numbers dramatically understate the real-world housing problem.

The study’s definition of “unrestricted” is purely geographic. A property is considered available even if it is unaffordable, unavailable for rent, already occupied, or otherwise impossible for a registrant to obtain. The analysis also does not account for HOA or condominium restrictions, clustering ordinances, or other barriers to actually obtaining housing. And again, the study does not include municipal residency restrictions statewide. Consequently, Dr. Socia concludes that his estimates are conservative and likely underestimate the true amount of restricted housing.

• In South Florida, the restrictions can leave virtually nowhere to live.

The numbers for Miami-Dade and Broward are particularly striking. In Miami-Dade County, the state restrictions—including pools—cover approximately 62.4%–65.0% of residential parcels. When Miami-Dade’s additional 2,500-foot school restriction is added, the combined restrictions cover approximately 90.0%–90.9% of residential parcels and 92.6%–93.2% of residential units. In Broward County, the state restrictions including pools already cover approximately 89.3%–89.9% of residential parcels and 91.6%–92.1% of residential units. Adding the municipal restrictions raises that to approximately 98.1% of residential parcels and 98.6% of residential units—and this calculation does not even include school-bus-stop buffers, because the necessary data was unavailable.

• The restrictions are compounded by Florida’s 500-foot loitering restriction.

The report also maps Florida’s separate 500-foot loitering restriction around places where children congregate. Dr. Socia finds that large portions of major Florida cities are covered by the restriction.

When residency restrictions, county and municipal restrictions, and the loitering restriction are layered on top of one another, the geographic effect becomes substantially more severe. That is significant for FAC’s broader constitutional argument: the issue isn’t merely a restriction on where someone may sleep between 10PM and 6AM. Taken together, the laws can dictate where a person can live, where they can go, and where they can remain in public.

• The report connects the housing restrictions to an established body of research showing collateral harm without demonstrated public-safety benefits.

Dr. Socia notes that multiple studies have found that residency restrictions do not reduce recidivistic sex-crime rates, while research has associated them with difficulty obtaining stable housing, homelessness, and transient living situations. The report also cites Florida government-sponsored studies. A survey of Florida Correctional Probation Specialists found that residency restrictions were a barrier to returning to previous residences, provided a false sense of security, and were described as the “number one obstacle” for supervised sex offenders. The report further cites Florida OPPAGA’s 2024 finding that approximately 7% of registered sexual offenders and 12% of sexual predators living in Florida communities were homeless or transient, with rates as high as 34% in some counties.