MESA -- It is perfectly legal for close to a dozen sex offenders to live close to several Mesa schools.

The home, on Diamond Avenue, houses 11 offenders.

Seven schools, including elementary and high schools, are within easy walking distance.

"It meets the criteria to stay away from the schools,” said Stephen Collins, the home’s owner. “With as many schools as there are in Mesa, it's kind of hard, but we do meet … the distance criteria.”

In Arizona, even high risk sex offenders only have to live 1,000 feet away from a school, park or child care center.

Laws around the nation vary from 500 feet to 2,500 feet.

"How can they leave them be that close to children all that time?” said Chuck Iames.

Iames lives a few doors down from the sex offenders group home.

"I think they ought to be some place other than a neighborhood where there's children, a big group area where it's just them. Let them molest each other,” Iames said.

Collins said the offenders who live at his home must sign in and out, have curfews, and are monitored by an in-house supervisor.

“I don't feel there's anybody in this house that will re-offend,” he said. “And if I did, then they wouldn't be here.”