Owners of planned sex offender house sell after protests reach Western WA

Plans for a transitional home for sex predators in a Kennewick neighborhood have been scuttled.

Save Our Children Tri-Cities, the neighborhood organization that formed to fight the Less Restrictive Alternative home on Eighth Avenue announced that the home was purchased by an anonymous buyer on behalf of the group.

“The owners reached out and said they were ready to sell, and this community made it happen,” Janette Romero, co-lead of the group, posted on the Facebook page. “We also received word from Joe (Field) that he has left our city.”

Field could not be reached Friday about the announcement.

The home at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Edison Street has been at the center of controversy since the announcement in January that it would house sex offenders being released from the special commitment center on McNeil Island.

The facility in Pierce County is designed for Level 3 offenders who have a history of sexually violent crimes and an underlying personality disorder that makes them more likely than not to commit another crime.

After state officials and a judge determine it is safe for the resident to leave, the offenders can either be released without conditions, or be sent to either a state facility or a less restrictive alternative home.

Field, who runs a similar program in Walla Walla, had worked for about a year to find a location that met state guidelines before working with two women from Bellevue to buy the home on Eighth Avenue.

The women bought the 1.3 acres in December for $591,000. It’s unclear how much the new buyer paid for it. The sale has yet to close.

The news that the women were going to lease the home for use as a less restrictive alternative home generated a firestorm of protests in Kennewick, including a public forum that filled the Highlands Middle School gymnasium with frustrated, scared and angry grandparents, parents and children.

Members of the group also traveled to Western Washington to protest outside the workplace of Isabel Valle, one of the owners, and near the owners’ homes.

When protest organizers returned to Tri-Cities, they learned the owners were willing to sell and that Field had backed out of the project, said Romero.

They already had a local real estate agent and an anonymous buyer ready to buy the property, she said.

“I have a sense of relief and I feel like I can breathe a little better,” she told the Herald on Friday.

Romero credited the continued pressure in changing what seemed to be inevitable.

“We could not be prouder of how this neighborhood and community came together as one,” she said in the Facebook post. “This is what happens when people raise their voices and refuse to stay silent when it comes to the safety of our families and children.

“Thank you to everyone who prayed, showed up, spoke up and supported this effort. Every single one of you played a role in making this happen. A miracle from God! Nobody messes with his children!”

She said they also had support from Rachel Grayless of Tenino and Cathy Dahlquist of Enumclaw, who campaigned successfully to stop similar offender homes in their neighborhood.

Reps Stephanie Barnard, R-Pasco, and April Connors, R-Kennewick, added their voices in congratulating the community for their efforts.

“We are so, so, so thrilled and so grateful to the Tri-Cities community and the grassroots effort that really took flight and took off with this, and has done remarkable work,” Barnard said.

What’s next?

Romero said the group’s efforts aren’t finished. They need to regroup before fixing up the home so it can be sold again. This time they aim for it to go to a family.

“We’re going to take this win and get some rest,” she said. “We still plan to spread the word on these LRAs. ... We want to make sure no one is blind-sided like we were.”

While Pasco and Richland have placed a delay in approving permits for Less Restrictive Alternative homes, it’s unclear whether there are any steps that would stop the placement of the homes.

Romero would like to see rules that move the homes into light industrial areas and have better notification requirements for the area businesses and homes.

“There is some weight because this isn’t 100% over yet,” she told the Herald. “Until we can get the law changed, so these don’t pop up in residential neighborhoods.”

The push to find spots for less restrictive alternative homes has come about because of state laws directing officials to look at spreading out the facilities. Presently, most of the homes are in Pierce and King counties, even though offenders come from around the state.

Currently, five Benton County offenders are housed at McNeil Island.

The process for finding spots for the transitional homes remains opaque, with Washington agencies pointing fingers at each other when asked by the Herald who makes the final choice.

Connors and Bernard said they are not finished in finding a solution to where the homes can be located so they don’t endanger communities. They tried offering eight measures that would have limited the placement of less restrictive alternative homes, but the measures failed to make it through this year’s legislative session.

“We have been doing other things in the background. We’ve been meeting with DSHS (Department of Social and Health Services), the governor’s office, DOC (the Department of Corrections). We sent another unified letter to the governor today. So our work is not done here,” Connors said.

Barnard said they plan to work with the agencies to come up with legislation that could be passed in the next session about the homes.

This story was originally published March 6, 2026 at 11:36 AM.