IL: Park created with the intention of displacing registrants

In the latest installment of “Let’s Pretend This Will Make Us Safer,” the city of Joliet, Illinois is planning to construct a public park on an empty lot across from a group home housing 11 individuals on the sex offense registry. The land has long been vacant and unused, but now, conveniently, it’s becoming a park. One that just happens to sit within 500 feet of the residence, triggering state-mandated residency restriction laws.

As a result, all 11 men living in the Cora Street home referred to by some media outlets with charming nicknames like “pedophile palace”, will likely be forced to relocate. Never mind that this home was one of the few stable housing solutions for formerly incarcerated individuals. Never mind that all residents were compliant with registration laws, had served their time, and were living peaceably under supervision.

The timing is impeccable. City officials deny that the park is a targeted move, of course, but if it looks like a workaround to force people out of lawful housing and quacks like it too… well, you know how the saying goes.

This move mirrors what we’ve seen in city after city: local governments using residency restrictions, exclusion zones, and the creation of pocket parks to intentionally displace people on the registry, rather than dealing with facts or actual risk. It’s easier to bulldoze lives than confront the evidence—namely, that residency restrictions do not reduce recidivism, and in fact, make communities less safe by increasing homelessness and instability.

The home on Cora Street is run by NewDay Apartments, an organization that works to provide stable housing for returning citizens, including those on the registry. These homes are monitored, residents are supervised, and everyone there is already following the law. In other words, this was a solution until the city decided it needed a park, so now it creates a problem.

So what now? Eleven men will be uprooted, housing stability will be destroyed, and local law enforcement will be forced to track individuals who no longer have a legal place to live. That’s not safety, that’s political theater.

What Joliet is doing isn’t unique. It’s part of a broader pattern of policies that ignore evidence and favor optics. And who pays the price? Not just the individuals directly affected, but the entire community that must bear the consequences of pushing people into homelessness and chaos.