Video: Residents angry over sex offender treatment center moving into San Francisco neighborhood

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco residents of the Duboce Triangle neighborhood are not happy a sex offender rehab clinic is moving in.

Residents said the deal was quietly made without any outreach.

Sharper Future treats sex offenders who are required to attend rehab at their facilities as part of the terms of their parole or probation. It has been operating in a building at Van Ness and Market Street for decades.

But they have to move and have made arrangements to take over a spot at the corner of Church and Duboce at the end of February.

Residents said they were not informed of the deal until after the appeal window closed.

“If it weren’t for the breaking article in Hoodline news, the neighborhood would definitely not know about it,” resident Devin Kordt-Thomas said. “It was a huge shock, and there was actually no visibility, no transparency, no outreach that I am aware of to date.”

Residents say that Sharper Future has put profits above community safety and said the company should not move into the Duboce Triangle neighborhood because of the clinic’s proximity to homes and child daycare facilities.

“I actually started a petition on Change.org when this became known,” Kordt-Thomas said. “Currently, there are 900 petition supporters who believe that the brakes should be applied. There should be a public dialog, and this should be explored before they open and start bringing high-risk sex offenders to the neighborhood.”

Sharper Future said the center will not be as bad as people think and is more than the required distance of 250 feet away from those daycare facilities.

“They are not at risk in the ways that they’re thinking they are now,” Sharper Future spokeswoman Mary-Perry Miller said. “And, hopefully, be able to bring the community around to seeing that they are better off with us watching these guys in their community than not.”

Sharper Future said its clients will be required to wear ankle monitors and will not be allowed to hang out near the center.

It also said those treated there have a low rate of re-offending.