Ross Wollschlager — does the name sound familiar? Sept. 2, The Star reported that the recently released sexually violent predator lives in a state-provided tent in a riverbed in Ventura County.

We have a big problem in California with sex offenders and, more particularly, where to house them. Most people would suggest that prison is the best place. Despite efforts by the Legislature, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Department of Mental Health, local law enforcement and, most recently, the voters' resounding approval of "Jessica's Law" (Proposition 83), we simply won't be able to just lock them up and throw away the key, no matter how badly some might want this.

The real problem, the one everyone has been tiptoeing around, is that we don't know where to put these guys once they've done their time, and adding to the angst is the fact that most communities simply don't want them and won't tolerate them.

With the introduction of Megan's Law — an Internet-accessible database of registered sex offenders — it's pretty easy to find out if your neighbor is on the list. What you can do about it varies, depending on whether you are a homeowner, tenant, live near a park, school or daycare center, but it usually takes the form of loud and rankled protest along the lines of, "Hell No! Not In My Back Yard!" Interestingly, apartment owners (where most sex offenders end up living) can't do a thing about it, even though a high-risk sex offender shares a common wall with an innocent, unsuspecting child next door.

What Megan's Law, and all the media attention on the issue and especially Proposition 83 have wrought is a growing awareness of the extent of this problem — well over 65,000 registered sex offenders, concentrated in the state's 10 largest counties, mostly in the big cities. And this interest, at least on the part of John and Jane Q. Public, isn't impartial or clinical; it's worried, angry and determined to keep places where kids live, play and go to school safe.

While Jessica's Law will now keep offenders at least 2,000 feet away from schools, parks and daycare centers, which expands kids' safety zones, it will also push sex offenders into the hinterlands, shrinking their options for where they can live. Local governments throughout the state are starting to pass ordinances restricting where paroled or freed sex offenders can live and it isn't there. This is just the beginning of the new NIMBY movement, and like earlier debates over affordable housing and development in general, all the NIMBY folks accomplish is to push the problem somewhere else, anywhere but their back yard.

In fairness, there is a huge difference between NIMBY protests over plans to construct a new development in an established community and releasing paroled sex offenders — many of whom have a high risk of reoffending — into the neighborhood. It's about safety, about the odds not being in kids' favor, about adults doing their best to protect their families, not their property.

The California Apartment Association sees this problem and where it's headed. Rather than ignore it, parse it or tap-dance around it, we are committed to taking the challenge head on, not just because rental housing bears the greatest brunt of sex-offender placements, but also because it's the right and smart thing to do.

The governor has created a High Risk Sex Offender Task Force, and we're appreciative to have had an opportunity to get our 2 cents in during its proceedings earlier this year. But, as far as we're concerned, we've barely just begun on the matter of finding "appropriate and equitable housing solutions for placement of high-risk sexual offenders," and we heartily agree that the task force should continue to convene to address these critical issues.

The first step in the process of truly understanding how large the problem might be is to redefine who should be placed on the Megan's Law Web Site.

The California Apartment Association position would be to list only the high-risk sex offenders, and not those individuals who might have been convicted of less-harmful offensives such as nude sunbathing or urinating in public. By reducing the list to only high-risk sexual offenders, we can better understand the magnitude of the problem and begin to create long-term solutions.

We recognize that there are complex layers to this problem and don't take the challenge lightly. This is a time as never before to truly think outside the box, to not let the burden of the state's bureaucracy nor the Legislature's always-humming political calculator frame the solutions.

This is a call to both the public and private sector, to the state's apartment owners, builders, local government officials, mental-health experts and corrections officials to untangle and simplify the maze of laws governing this issue, overcome our differences, find common ground and build the solution.

— Scott Monroe, of Irvine, is a certified property manager and president of the California Apartment Association.