Councilman Bobby Traylor said the proposed ordinance was prompted by last weekend’s killing of a Shell Mart convenience store clerk. A resident of a group home on Ridley Avenue is charged with murder. He had been reported missing in October.
According to a neighbor, another resident of the group home has been arrested on a murder charge in Douglasville.
Police have been dispatched on numerous occasions to the group home, which he said houses sex offenders, thieves and other convicted criminals. Ridley Avenue also has another group home, he said.
“The people over here feel like their kids are in prison and can’t get out in the yard,” the neighbor said. “They cuss at you, holler and fight. There’s no telling how many have been taken to jail from over here.”
He said the home ought to be in a commercial zone with a 10-foot fence and barbed wire.
Under the draft ordinance, group homes would have to get a license from the city, similar to alcohol, pawn shop and taxicab licenses. Council could have a hearing to suspend or revoke a license because of assaults or other lawbreaking.
Existing group homes would get to stay put under the proposed ordinance, but may be subject to city licensing requirements. Any home that was vacant for a year would lose its “grandfather” status.
Currently, any group home is allowed in residential zones.
“The ordinance creates two types of facilities,” said city attorney Jeff Todd - those that could go in any zoning classification and those that have to go in nonresidential zones.
Nonresidential group homes would include a “halfway house, a treatment center for alcoholism or drug abuse, a work-release facility for convicts or ex-convicts, a home for the detention or rehabilitation of juveniles adjudged delinquent or unruly and placed in the custody of the state … as an alternative to incarceration.”
The home also couldn’t be in a residential zone if it served people “on parole, probation or convicted and released from incarceration for any crimes including child molestation, aggravated child molestation or child sexual abuse … or individuals required to register as sex offenders.”
Group homes in residential zones would be required to have four or less people in a “single housekeeping unit and in a long term, familylike environment in which staff persons provide care, education and participation in community activities for the residents with the primary goal of enabling the residents to live as independently as possible in order to reach maximum potential under the direction and guidance of a designated managing caregiver, who must be a resident of said group residential facility.”
Joel Martin can be reached at jmartin@ lagrangenews.com or (706) 884-7311, Ext. 235.
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