An apartment complex in McKeesport where residents say a number of children live is only a block away from a boarding house where 23 convicted sex offenders live. (Tony LaRussa | Tribune-Review)
Story by TONY LaRUSSA
Tribune-Review
Dec. 30, 2021
Christopher Farkas said he’s not one to judge the 23 convicted sex offenders living at his boarding house in a rundown, troubled section of McKeesport.
Without Farkas’ Hospitality House, he said those offenders, most needing help with basic daily tasks such as cooking, laundry and complying with the rules for their release, would be on the streets.
A review of the state’s Megan’s Law registry shows that it’s the type of unregulated facility across the state — mostly in the form of boarding houses — where these offenders end up when they are out of options.
The migration of sex offenders to Farkas’ facility is symptomatic of a simmering crisis in Pennsylvania, where aging and ailing sex offenders are hard pressed to find places to live that will give them the support they need to survive.
“Most places won’t even accept them,” Farkas said. “And certainly people in the classy neighborhoods don’t want them living in their community.”
With intensive daily monitoring and a “no excuses” list of rules for living at Hospitality House, Farkas said neighbors should not be concerned. Not every resident at his facility is a sex offender, he said.
“I think people up here should be more worried about the heroin, the crack and the bullets flying,” he said.
Offenders living at Hospitality House range in age from 30 to 79 and have been convicted of crimes ranging from luring a child into a motor vehicle or structure to aggravated indecent assault involving a minor to involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and rape, according to a review of the 23 residents’ case files on the state’s Megan’s Law registry.
The offenses occurred from the early 1980s through the last few years, the files show.
“They all have to report to their parole officers and know that if they mess up, they are going to be thrown out,” Farkas said. “And they don’t want that to happen.”
Not all traditional nursing, personal care and assisted-living facilities will admit sex offenders, although parole officers know there are certain facilities that will green light their admissions, making it common for those facilities to have higher concentrations of offenders, said state Department of Corrections spokesman Ryan Tarkowski.
That’s the case with Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center in Beaver County, where at one point this year seven sex offenders resided.
“Each of these facilities set their own policies regarding who they will accept. The number of facilities that will accommodate Megan’s Law registrants is limited,” Tarkowski said.
Tarkowski added that the Department of Corrections operates community facilities and halfway houses on a contract basis that accommodate sex offenders but don’t provide all the care required by some of the oldest and ailing offenders.
When all options are exhausted, many sex offenders are driven to look at places such as Hospitality House, where frequently the money they receive through Supplemental Social Security payments covers the cost of their stay.
In return, Farkas gives them a bed, three meals a day and someone to keep them on track in terms of registering their whereabouts with the state.
“It’s easy for people to say, ‘We don’t want these people around. They should just disappear,’ ” he said. “But the fact is, they have paid their debt to society. Many of them are old and can’t live on their own. They are still human souls and deserve to have a warm bed. If they weren’t here, they might be sleeping under a bridge.
“I won’t justify or judge what they did, but some of them got in trouble for looking at things on the internet. Others committed crimes 30 or more years ago, did their time and now want to stay clean and live a normal life. They’ve been to jail and will do whatever they can to not have go back.”
While Hospitality House residents are free to come and go, the facility provides around-the-clock supervision by staff.
McKeesport officials said there have been no building code or significant issues with crime at the facility, but neighbors give it mixed reviews.
A neighbor who wished to remain unnamed knows that the brick building is home to multiple convicted sex offenders. But it’s just one of the local challenges.
“We’ve got vacant house after vacant house up here and all sorts of drug activity and prostitution going on all the time,” she said.
A walk around the surrounding blocks reveals numerous abandoned houses strewn with trash, furniture and other debris and no doors or windows to keep people out.
Her only interaction with a Hospitality House resident ended quickly.
“I was outside in the yard with my daughter and a guy from over there was banging on my fence asking what we were up to,” she said. “I just turned enough to show him the gun on my hip and he left.”
McKeesport police Chief Adam Alfer said nearly all the calls his officers respond to at Hospitality House involve minor incidents between residents.
“Like any other facility, we may get a disturbance call or that there was a theft inside,” Alfer said. “The owners work with us to eliminate the problems when they occur, so I really don’t have any issues with them.”
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• Hidden Danger: Registered sex offenders often go undetected in care homes
• State lawmakers vow to better protect care home residents from convicted sex offenders
• Brighton Rehab no stranger to federal, state scrutiny for resident care
• No central registry in Pennsylvania tracks convicted sex offenders placed in nursing care facilities