9 November 5-11, 2026 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | men who can’t rejoin the world at large. And it prevents them from accessing a pillar of a stable, law-abiding life: housing. The overlapping state, county, and munici- pal restrictions legally bar registrants from living in 90% of Broward County’s 691,964 residential parcels, per Socia’s research. Of Miami-Dade County’s 490,488 residential parcels, about 65% are off limits for regis- trants, according to Socia’s data. “By making housing more difficult for people to find, then you’re really you’re just making the community less safe,” he says. “You’re taking away some of these support mechanisms that allow people to return to society and become reintegrated back into the community.” Socia pointed out two other major flaws with residency restrictions. Most children who are sexual assault victims knew their abusers beforehand. And a rising number of sex offenders commit their crimes wholly on- line. Residency restrictions simply aren’t rel- evant to most sexual crimes. The scenario of a stranger stalking a playground or a bus stop to find a victim is incredibly rare, he says: “It’s much more likely to be a family friend or a family member, somebody that’s known to the victim, who’s in a trusted position, rather than the random person living in the street that has a creepy van.” Socia’s research focuses on policies, prop- erty records, and data; he rarely goes into the field to visit encampments. He pored through those sources to create a map of restricted ar- eas for registrants, which is now being used in FAC’s federal lawsuit. The maps for Broward and Miami-Dade counties (pictured below) are almost completely blocked out for registrants. Even with his geographic software, years of research expertise and doctorate, Socia says he still finds it difficult to create a map that matches state and county residency re- strictions with 100% accuracy. Sex offenders naturally struggle to comply with residency restrictions. The boundaries of where they are legally permitted to live can shift when- ever a school, playground, church or public pool opens or relocates. “If I was just somebody on the street that didn’t have advanced GIS capabilities on my expensive computer, I don’t know how I’d figure out if something was within one of these buffer zones or not,” Socia says. “It’s not like these areas are lit up red that they’re re- stricted. It’s just that there happens to be something 945 feet away that you might not be able to see, but that’s a restricted place, and so that policy or that property might be re- stricted from living. “And you might have no way of knowing that.” Socia says the laws don’t address the types of crimes or how they occur. And when states, counties, and cities create their own overlap- ping buffer zones, they all but force people to move. Other communities in turn pass restric- tions to protect themselves, and so on. “That can create a domino effect, where you have other places passing these laws as almost de- fensive mechanisms to make sure that the peo- ple that are forced out of nearby areas don’t end up in their communities,” Socia says. “It’s kind of a race to the bottom in terms of having hous- ing available for people, which is one of the key factors of successful reentry into society.” State Sen. Stan McClain, who sponsored the new pool restriction bill, which took ef- fect July 1, has not responded to multiple calls and emails requesting comment for this story. While most registrants who spoke with New Times say they feel little optimism that a federal lawsuit will successfully open more of South Florida to them, advocates at FAC be- lieve the legal action will eventually offer some reprieve from the residency restrictions. On Aug. 11, FAC filed a suit against FDLE Commissioner Mark Glass, 34 counties (in- cluding Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties), and 17 cities mostly in South Florida. FAC’s claim alleges that residency re- striction laws at large amount to cruel and unusual punishment. “When someone is convicted of a crime, a judge imposes a sentence, the person serves it, and the matter is then supposed to be done and over with; the offender’s debt to society is paid, and he may reintegrate and return to normal life,” FAC’s claim states. “That is, un- less the crime is an offense that requires reg- istration as a sex offender. Long after such a person has served his sentence, completed any probation or supervised release, and paid all fines, costs, or restitution, the State of Flor- ida, its counties, cities, towns, and villages carry on subjecting him to a life-long regime of crushing punishments that restrict virtu- ally every aspect of daily life.” FAC argues Florida has turned the registry system into a tool of de facto banishment, which is “among the most severe forms of non-lethal punishment known to Anglo- American law,” in the words of the complaint. The complaint alleges that state law forbids governments from piling new punishments on top of old ones for long-past offenses. After all, people with DUI convictions are allowed to live near bars, people convicted of abusing their children are allowed to conceive more and released murderers are allowed to live around as many people as they like. “Yet Florida and its counties and municipal- ities apply those later-enacted restrictions to them anyway, imposing new disabilities years or decades after the offense conduct occurred and the punishments imposed by the sentenc- ing court were served,” the complaint states. A federal judge has set the case for a bench trial in December 2027. [email protected]