RESIDENTS TAKE BACK THE STREETS

People are banding together in Vancouver's West End to fight back against
street-crime and vagrancy.

City council yesterday approved a $200,000 pilot program to help it and
other groups like it deal with street-level nuisance and crime issues.

Groups will bring what's happening directly to a staff co-ordinator and
committee, which will take them to police and potentially all three levels
of government.

"There's a concentration at the moment of homeless people, of drug issues,
of panhandlers," said Coun. Tim Stevenson.

Among the problem-makers, he said, are youth addicted to crystal meth.

"This isn't the quick, easy 'just arrest kids,' " said Stevenson. "This is
going to make our areas in the city much more livable."

Similar programs are in the works for the Grandview-Woodlands and
Collingwood neighbourhoods.