A major metropolitan area like Miami is full of schools, churches, playgrounds, parks and malls. Once the heftier residency restrictions were in place, there were only three places in all of Miami sex offenders could live: at the airport, in the Everglades or under a major thoroughfare called the Julia Tuttle Causeway.

And this is where probation officers told the sex offenders to live. According to the law, there was nowhere else for them to go. 

By the summer of 2009, the population of “Sex Offender City” under the bridge had swelled to over 100. Tents were dwellings, patio table and chair sets were dining rooms, generators supplied electricity, and just about everyone living there sported a GPS unit around his ankle. Amenities and toiletries were luxury items and toilet paper became the de facto currency. It was hot, especially in the Miami sun, and these "monsters of Miami" had to live here forever.

A very strong argument can be made there was one man behind Sex Offender City, one man who caused the creation of this place. His name is Ron Book. Book has his reasons for creating the situation, and he disputes that he did, indeed, create it, but that story is for part two.

But there are others who are trying to help the sex offenders move on with their lives. One of them is Randy Young. He finds houses where sex offenders can live, leases them, then leases them back out to sex offenders. And finding rental property is not very difficult in south Florida, which has suffered dramatically in the ongoing economic crisis. By putting sex offenders back in society, he is changing the way people think about these men. 

To be continued…