JOINING FORCES TO FIGHT DRUG HOUSES

New Westminster's Housing Integrated Service Team is seeing its share
of success, five months into a six-month pilot program.

The team consists of representatives from police, the Simon Fraser
Health Region, the electrical utility, BC Gas, and the city's fire,
planning, engineering, strategic services and animal control
departments. Together, they are targeting chronic problem properties
in the city which generate more than their fair share of complaints to
police and city hall. The team is currently dealing with 26 properties.

Const. Glen Richmond, the team's police representative, said the team
helped shut down three drug houses in the city located in the
900-block 12th Street, the 400-block Seventh Street, and the 900-block
of McBride Boulevard.

The 12th Street property had a "difficult" set of tenants who were
causing drug-related problems but have since been evicted.

The Seventh Street property is a four-unit building which had "a lot
of crack dealers" working out of three of the four suites, Richmond
said. They were all evicted with the help of police who presented the
Residential Tenancy Branch with evidence of drug and nuisance activity
in support of the owner's eviction efforts.

In that case, a tenant in the fourth suite assisted police and was
"subsequently beaten up with a baseball bat for his efforts," he said,
stressing that such incidents are "extremely rare" and that this
particular tenant was not exactly an innocent bystander. "It's not
like Granny Goodcookies opened her mouth and got beat up."

The McBride Boulevard property was vacated last week using a section
of the Health Act that deals with nuisance problems affecting the
health of neighbours, including causing such conditions as insomnia,
restlessness and anxiety. That section helped grant the housing team
an order to vacate the property within 72 hours. The property has now
been put up for sale.

Police and city hall were "just inundated" with complaints from
neighbours of that property, located on the edge of Massey Heights,
which had become the site of drug activity, said Richmond, who noted
30 different individuals from the police department and city hall were
involved in helping get rid of those problem tenants.

In that case, there was not enough evidence to charge tenants with
drug activity inside the home, but charges were laid on people found
outside the premises to be in possession of narcotics.

The housing team also identified seven apartment buildings which
together accounted for 1,400 calls for police service over the past
three years. Of those, five have already joined the Crime Free
Multi-Housing Program, while the other two look like they will be
participating soon, Richmond said. Many of the property owners were
appreciative of the city's assistance as the owners were finding the
management practices they had been using were no longer sufficient to
prevent today's problems, according to a city staff report.

Richmond said many simply were using poor business practices to begin
with. "They think because they're filling up their building it's
okay," he said. "It may seem like good business practice, but they end
up spending time and money to get rid of [problem tenants]."

For Richmond, the team is charting new territory using existing
legislation. "I feel like Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue.
We know the new world's out there, we're just not sure where."

A new bylaw which received approval in principle from city council
recently will also help make the owners responsible for what happens
on their properties, Richmond said. "It puts owners on notice they
can't just rent a property in New West and turn a blind eye to it."