The state this week cut back housing aid for paroled sex offenders, something critics worry could leave some of Tracy’s registered out on the streets unless they can afford rent on their own.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced on Monday that it will ratchet back vouchers for lengthy motel stays and apartment rentals for the 5,000 paroled sex offenders throughout California who received the help since February last year.

Of the nearly 8,000 registered statewide, about 70 live in Tracy.

Instead of long-term help, the state will limit transitional housing aid to 60 days, after which parolees are expected to pick up their own tab.

Corrections undersecretary Scott Kernan said the move wasn’t necessarily a money-saving measure but a way to free up some costs that could go toward helping paroled sex offenders find work, clothe themselves and get counseling.

The state spent about $20 million last year to pay housing costs for paroled sex offenders. This year, a similar amount will instead get divided into other welfare costs, including help for registrants to find jobs and outfitting them with global positioning system ankle bracelets along with California’s larger parolee population of 125,000.

“What we found was that before some people had abused the help and stayed in state-paid housing for two to three years,” said department spokesman Gordon Hinkle. “This is a shift in how we spend that money.”

The California Sex Offender Management Board — a group made up of police and probation officers and counselors for sex offenders — opposes the cutback, saying it could leave more registrants homeless.

Jessica’s Law — one that bans registered sex offenders from living too close to a school or park — already increases the chance of a sex offense because it weakens stability for parolees by making it tougher to find a legal place to live, the group says. The recent change in housing help adds to that danger, the board argues.

The group released a report last month that criticized the 2,000-foot ban and urged lawmakers to rethink the restriction and what it means combined with the recent cutback in housing aid.

The state has reported a jump in the number of sex offenders who have registered as homeless from 88 before voters passed Jessica’s Law in 2006 to nearly 1,300 this month.

But one thing state officials worried about before was that offenders became too reliant on the state-paid rent, Hinkle said.

Conversely, critics worry that the drop in subsidized housing help might force registered offenders outside their homes when Tracy’s cityscape already tends to force registrants outside the city, according to police.

The town’s abundance of schools, parks and relatively expensive housing is one reason Tracy has so few registered sex offenders compared with Stockton and Modesto, which have several hundred dotting the map, the management board said.

That lack of available housing legally available to sex offenders keeps many of those registered clustered at certain apartments, motels and mobile homes in Tracy and other cities. In parts of Stockton, as many as a dozen sex offenders live in the same motel.

In Tracy, a few live in Green Oaks Mobile Home Park on North MacArthur Drive because it’s outside the banned distance from schools and parks and is cheap enough for the state to cover housing costs, according to the state department.

Another group lives in cheap housing along Fourth Street and other places with affordable apartments or mobile homes.

There’s no punishment if they violate the Jessica’s Law distance ban, Tracy police Det. Octavio Lopez said. It’s up to parole officers to pin registrants down for parole violations, as Jessica’s Law carries no enforceable weight.

“It’s really not up to us to do anything but keep an eye on them,” he said. “We just monitor them, but can’t do anything else.”

Once registered sex offenders become homeless, they’re much more likely to fall behind their legal obligations, because instead of having to re-register annually, they have to check in every month with a local police department, Lopez said.

“In that sense, when they’re on the streets they can be more difficult to monitor,” he said. “We just ask that they at least tell us what part of town then tend to stay in.”

• Contact Tracy Press reporter Jennifer Wadsworth at 830-4225 or jwadsworth@tracypress.com.