Some in the Rocky Mount community are concerned about a halfway house that’s providing a home for registered sex offenders a block away from the city’s downtown Event Center.
While community advocates are calling for the nonprofit home to be moved elsewhere, the home’s owner is defending the work his organization does.
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Rocky Mount’s downtown event center is at the heart of the city’s efforts to boost tourism, drawing hundreds of visitors for weekend shows and competitions.
But some in the community have concerns about a nearby home.
“We found out that this property was housing well-known sex offenders,” community activist Tarrick Pittman said.
Pittman recently learned about the home at 403 Atlantic Avenue. It’s a transitional home for people with felonies who have been released from prison or are on probation, including registered sex offenders.
The home is close enough to be seen from the parking lot of the event center. For Pittman, that’s a problem.
“You have a lot of young people coming to the event center, you have a lot of young kids that are participating in sporting events,” he told WRAL News. “We don’t want that type of house close to the event center here in Rocky Mount.”
We took those concerns to the City of Rocky Mount.
A city spokesperson said six sex offenders currently live at the property, which is run by a nonprofit called Loving Light Community Outreach.
The city said the halfway house didn’t violate any zoning laws, and there haven’t been any serious crimes reported there in the past six months.
On April 26, WRAL News knocked on the home’s door and met Dennis Stephenson, who runs the home.
Stephenson rejected the idea that the home should be moved.
“The event center came after this home was here,” Stephenson said. “This home was here 10 to 15 years prior to the event center.”
Stephenson told WRAL News that everyone living at the home works a full-time job and has a 7 pm curfew, with security cameras and staff on-site 24 hours a day.
“They’re banned from being by a school, 700 and some feet, they can’t live over here by a daycare center within 100 and some feet, you can’t stay in the projects because you’ve got a felony,” Stephenson said. “So my question to legislators and the world, where do you want them to go? They are human.”
Stephenson felt the home’s been doing something essential for Rocky Mount, not putting the community at risk.
“What I’m offering to the community, I’ll sit down and have a conversation with anybody about my program,” he said. “Because my program is productive, we help the community, we pay taxes for that event center.”