I was contacted and received a letter from one of the council that is a neighbor of mine stating what I said above, and she at the time was very upset with Steve.

I was only responding to your initial posting as it implies that more than half of the neighbors are for the shelter no matter what, when infact it is the exact opposite.

If anyone else wants a copy of the flier, we shall be handing them out every week until we get an answer. It was back on September 11th, when I was told I would have an answer soon. It is now November, how long does it take to make a decision?

96% said they wanted the shelter closed if there were no checks in place.

All we are asking is for a sex offender check.

We have yet to get that, or an answer at all from Our Redeemers.

Please pressure your pastor to do the checks.

I too hope that one day there is not a need for shelters.

Hopefully, we at Our Redeemer's, working together with SHARE and community representatives, will be able to come up with a policy that will allow our congregation to continue serving a few of our City's homeless as well as alleviate the fear and anxiety of those who are objecting to this ministry or are simply upset by this one failure of the screening process in place.

PersonallyI hope to see the day when such shelters, as the one now in place at Calvary, are no longer needed. To make this possible I trust that many, if not all, of us who are involved in this issue support the Housing Levy and contnue to engage our political representatives about reforming the Washington State tax system so that the City, County and State along with the Federal government will be better able to replace the low cost housing that has been destroyed by developers over the past four decades.

There was a time in our country – not so long ago – when homelessness as we now know it – did not exist. Perhaps with some more involvement and efforts on the part of people like us across the land, we will be able to develop a society, similar to those in Europe, where people not needed in the economy are treated in a more humane fashion than what we are currently doing and failing to do here in the United States.

ha ha. good one.

If the church want to house offenders then there need to be certain safety procedures AND the church need to legally except liability if something should happen right?

the “choice” your referring to was determined by 36 people of the congregation if i recall right. please correct me if i'm wrong. and that it was the choice of the church, not the community in which the shelter is running.

“Do you think the neighborhood will be safer if the church won't let them stay there?”

Do I think the neighborhood would be safe if they stop busing in totally unaccountable level 3 child rapists into my neighborhood every day? Yes.

I don't get all this sympathy to sex offenders when there are many deserving people out there that need help, want help, and aren't people that legally cannot stay near schools, parks, or daycares.

I really do hope the state passes the law that forces churches to follow the laws everyone else has to abide by and then there will be none of this bickering.

The whole battle about the shelter, has now become a battle about having a shelter and not simply about a request to not have sex offenders housed in it.

That's irrelevant. SHARE and Redeemers promised to not let sex offenders stay at the church.

Then a level 3 (the highest) child rapist moved in and we, the neighbors, were the ones who had to tell SHARE he was there because they didn't check. And remember, this offender was only caught because he was getting his mail forwarded to the church.

Have you even seen where this place is located?

Referring to them all as rapists is exactly the witch hunt mentality that should be avoided. Yes, of course some of them bear watching. As statistics show, most of them were likely convicted of violating a child/teen who knew them. The creepy stranger molesting your child is a much smaller percentage. It's like freaking out about latch releases on your car trunk because once a kid got locked in one and died, but not making your child wear a seat belt properly.

I'd be curious to hear what the statistics are of anyone in this type of program being caught re-offending, and I wonder what that rate compares to the homeless totally off the grid offenders. I'd bet it's not as frequent as the fear mongers would like you to think.

You'd think people smart enough to organize and run a church would be smart enough to see through these crapulous scammers.

Great, so SHARE will know which rapists to be careful of, we won't.

“I'd be way more concerned about the sex offender who gets kicked out”

Fine, then Redeemers has to put it to a vote whether the congregation wants to open a sex offenders shelter in residential Ballard….oh, and they'll need to tell their insurance company too, I imagine it'll do wonders for their insurance rates.

My understanding (which seems to make sense) is that sex offenders are much safer to have around when they're involved with a community in some way. I don't mean baby sitting your kids, I mean with a known address, participating in scheduled events, with people around to notice if they start to stray.

I'd be way more concerned about the sex offender who gets kicked out, is homeless, and a virtual rogue sex offender with no one to keep an eye on them or notice if they disappear or start doing things they shouldn't.

I think the known quantity is better than the unknown by a long shot. Of course, that church isn't next door to my house, and I don't have kids. However even if I did, I'd like to think I'd say the same.