St. Joseph County Republican leaders hope they’ve identified a new way to stop construction of a proposed intake center for the chronically homeless: The danger of registered sex offenders.
Joe Thomas says he’s hearing very heavy opposition from his constituents to a nonprofit group’s plans to build a low-barrier intake center for the chronically homeless on Bendix Drive near the airport. The Republican county council member joined Republican County Commissioner Derek Dieter at a press conference Tuesday to announce what they said were “alarming findings” about Motels4Now.
There are currently six registered sex offenders staying there.
Motels4Now is the makeshift intake center that’s operated since 2020 in a former Knights Inn on Lincolnway.
State law says offenders can’t live within 1,000 feet of a school or day care center. Thomas says he knows the proposed site wouldn’t violate the rule. Neither Growing Kids Learning Center nor Corpus Christi elementary school are within 1,000 feet.
But he says they’re still within close walking distance.
Even if the center banned sex offenders, Thomas says he would still oppose its proposed location.
He says he and his constituents want to know why the center can’t instead be placed out in a cornfield somewhere so the homeless, sex offenders or not, would be distanced from people.
"You'd have to provide transportation for them, probably," Thomas says. "But somebody said, why don't you get them out in the country, where they're away from businesses, residential, apartments? I don't know what the success is if that's been done, but shoot, maybe there has been. Explore that."
