Florida has some of the strictest regulations for sex offenders in the world. Anyone on its register can't live within 1,000 feet (305 metres) of places children might gather and many of them end up homeless.
Pat Powers helped establish Miracle Village five years ago in the middle of sugar cane country to give them somewhere to turn after being ostracised by family and friends.
"Right now, we are pushing 130 [residents]," he tells SBS Dateline's Aaron Thomas. "We turn down at least 20 for every one that we accept."
"I was one of the top racketball coaches in the world and… I got involved with my students," Pat explains. "Everybody comes here has said, you know what, I messed my life up, I messed somebody else's life up, I hurt somebody."
The village is run as a Christian mission and has a proviso that each resident must accept responsibility for their crimes. It also doesn't accept violent or serial offenders.
But it has attracted controversy, especially in the small town of Pahokee six kilometres away. Many people there are angry and scared that so many pedophiles have moved in nearby.
Pahokee’s Pastor Patti Auperlee was herself sexually abused as a child, but she's become an unlikely saviour for the residents.
"I struggle with the stories of grandpa, who played touchy feely with the grandchildren. Yes, I want to smack them, what they did was wrong," Patti tells Dateline, but she says the offenders need compassion, not condemnation.
"They were judged already by the court system: a lot of them changed in prison, prison was good for them, they don't want to go back to that."
She's established links between Miracle Village and her church, allowing the offenders to help out at some community events.
But supporters are also calling for change to Florida's strict laws, which mean someone caught urinating near a playground or sending inappropriate texts ends up on the same list as violent sex offenders.
The former teacher who is now Miracle Village's Director, Chad Stoffel, was convicted even though his teenage victim refused to testify against him.
His conviction was instead based on his own confession at a Christian therapy centre, where he'd turned to find a "cure" for being gay.
"There is a very big broad brush that lumps all sex crimes into one category," he says. "If the dangerous ones are in there, there are so many that aren't as dangerous, that the really dangerous ones are really hiding."
"We are hoping that one day the laws change and that we can be reunited with our families, be reunited with our friends, and live in a normal society again without the fear of our houses being burnt down."
