'KEEP OUR STREETS SAFE: HAVE SOME LEMONADE'

DURING the summer of 2003, a group of kids walked up to drug dealers and
addicts in Vancouver's Oppenheimer Park, handing them each a cup of
lemonade and a note.

The note - written by one of the kids - said this: "Did you know that there
are about 140 kids that live within two blocks of this here park? We want
to keep it safe for everyone. Here's some lemonade. P.S. It's Country Time
lemonade."

The innocent plea for safety in the park came shortly after a man was
gunned down there on a summer afternoon as part of a turf war. The kids
delivering the notes were all members of Christian families that have
chosen to live in the epicentre of the city's most downtrodden and
controversial neighbourhood. While children in other neighbourhoods were
attending vacation Bible schools, these kids were, in effect, negotiating a
ceasefire in their play space.

Drawing close to the need

The contrast between the wisdom in their bold note and the problems
surrounding them couldn't be greater. How did these kids (who
enthusiastically love where they live) come to reside in the Downtown
Eastside, a part of town that most of us assume people don't ever choose to
be? A place where people only "end up."

It began 15 years ago when Lane and Kathy Walker, a Christian couple with a
history of social activism (often as part of the Seamless Garment Network),
felt compelled to live in a poor neighbourhood.

"The issue of proximity was very important," says Kathy. "You should be
close to the struggle, where it's not something that you can simply walk
away from."

The Walkers, who at the time had two young children, had no idea how close
to "the struggle" they would end up. Kathy admits one area they "didn't
think [they] could cope with" was Oppenheimer Park. Yet, when a rental
house became available directly across from the infamous park frequented by
the city's most hardcore drug users and dealers, they pushed their
reservations aside.

One astonishing aspect of the country's poorest neighbourhood is the fact
that its rental rates are some of the highest in Vancouver. Rates are based
on the welfare rate and are generally set at $300 per room. And landlords
are most likely to follow a rooming house model, renting rooms within homes
to separate tenants. So, for a family searching for a place they can afford
to live - even in such an undesirable neighbourhood - there's a very
limited number of homes to choose from. That's how the Walkers and a
handful of other Christians ended up paying top dollar for a house with
panoramic views of drug use and violence taking place on a block they
wanted to avoid.

Over the last decade, the Christian community that began in that
dilapidated home at the corner of Cordova and Jackson has grown to include
five brightly painted, yet slightly sagging, houses that stand out as a
fresh blast of color in an otherwise tired looking urban landscape. The
homes are part of a 40-year lease agreement the families have with the
city. They have become known as St. Chiara Christian Community (named after
St. Clare of Assisi) and number 10 adults and 10 children between the ages
of one and 14.

Unlike the typical Christian outreach model, the group has never had a
formal goal, vision or action plan. Their plan has always been very basic.

"We weren't coming with an agenda. We didn't come to fix things," says
Kathy. They simply take opportunities to help people in need. And there are
many, many of those chances every day, from settling disputes and breaking
up fights to simply forming relationships with people and supporting them
in practical ways.

Vision at St. Chiara

Despite their lack of an agenda, they do talk a lot about creating an
"intentional community" that improves their neighbourhood. And they balk at
the idea of measuring their progress in any of the traditional ways
ministries often use.

"Programs aren't working. The systems . . . the analytical programmed
approaches . . . aren't working," says Lane. "Our approach, living right
here, is more costly," he says about the personal commitment they've all
made. "While some say that we're doing 'nice' things, we're here because we
believe it's our obligation not to abandon these people."

While their modus operandi seems simple enough, it doesn't take long for an
outsider to catch a glimpse of the deeper social and spiritual ideologies
that drive their actions. Lane bristles when people laud them in one breath
and then shake their head with the next, as in, "It's great that you do the
things you do, but I don't know how you can raise your kids there." It is
clear Lane is dismayed that "talented, creative, wealthy" Christians are
abandoning the inner city in favour of the "insulation" and "isolation" of
suburbia, which he believes has an abundance of less public, but more
dangerous, forms of sin. Sins like xenophobia, "materialistic depravity,"
racism, and sexual immorality. "The sin [in the Downtown Eastside] is just
more obvious," he says.

To the Walkers and the Vincents (the other core family of the community),
living amongst the poor is an obligation that every Christian should take
seriously, it is not a radical lifestyle choice. And they love it.

"This community has gifts for us," explains Lane, smiling as he sweeps his
hands toward the window facing the street. "We're surrounded by very good
energy here."

Building community, not condos

The St. Chiara community not only brightens this part of town, their
presence also acts as a deterrent to the gentrification of the
neighbourhood, something the community clearly resists. It is no secret
that investors, including many from the west coast of the United States,
have been eyeing this corner of the city for the next phase of condo and
townhouse developments, to start construction on "another Yaletown" as
Kathy puts it, describing it as "a militant capitalist push."

To the families in the brightly painted houses, building better communities
is about supporting and caring for the people who already live there, not
making the community better by moving the troubled people out.

Most of the adults in St. Chiara have jobs - nurses, home care aids,
working with special needs kids.

But the community discourages full-time work, because their role in the
neighbourhood involves simply having the time to help others, often on a
moment's notice. For example, every suppertime is an "open table" where
anyone in the neighbourhood can simply drop in and break bread with the
families. "We expect and welcome visitors," says Kathy. But, unlike many of
the Christian missions down here, they "don't do take-out. When people come
and sit at a table with you, pass the salt shaker, talk about their lives,
you're on a different level."

The kids are the key

And how do the kids fit into such an unconventional situation? It's easy to
assume the children of the St. Chiara Community are just along for the ride
as their parents live out a radical lifestyle choice. But that doesn't
appear to be the case. The kids are the most crucial ingredient in this
neighbourhood's hope for recovery.

According to the Walkers, the presence of children serves as a wake-up call
to the "overwhelming majority" of those involved in illegal activity in the
neighbourhood. The drug dealers and users that frequent the park may be at
a low state in their lives, but the fact that children live in the
neighbourhood, the fact that those kids live in plain view of their
actions, causes most of those people to modify their behaviour.

"People who were focused on themselves open up and begin to care for
others," notes Kathy. "Even in little things like noise and realizing the
kids need to be able to sleep at night."

In effect, those children give the residents of St. Chiara the moral
authority to curb violence and other criminal activity in a way that law
enforcement cannot, all because they actually reside in the neighbourhood.
Lane recalls one afternoon when he confronted a man who was beating a woman
on the corner.

"I walked over to him, let him look straight into my face and said, 'You
can't be doing this, man. Hitting a woman. I've got five daughters who live
in that house over there,'" he said, pointing across the intersection. The
man took off, but the next morning, as Lane was returning from walking his
kids to school, he spotted him cutting straight across the park in an
unwavering march. After a few nerve-wracking seconds, the two men were,
once again, face-to-face. This time, the former assailant thrust out his
arm in an invitation to shake Walker's hand. "You were right about what you
said the other day," he said. "I was raised to know you shouldn't hit a woman."

"We're able to help them to see what they already know is true," says
Kathy. "That you don't do these things in front of children; it's bad for
them, it's bad for the entire neighbourhood."

According to her, there are approximately 150 children who live within a
two-block radius of the park, many of them residing in the nearby
Four-Sisters Housing Co-op and Princess Place.

The arrival of children at the park does not go unnoticed, says Kathy, who
is continually encouraging families to use the play area there. "It's a
shock for [the addicts] to see us bringing our children amongst them,"
adding that her kids are "engaged on the issues" surrounding addiction,
violence and homelessness, including attending seminars on de-escalating
violence. "We highly value family life, and we feel strongly that children
are the glue that help anchor our life and encourage stability," she says.

Some time after the lemonade note was circulated, a new drug dealer showed
up in Oppenheimer Park. The Jamaican woman - described as a "queen bee" -
looked like a force to be reckoned with. When Kathy first approached her,
the dealer looked up and said, "I totally know about the 'kid thing.' This
is your neighbourhood."

The kids, it seemed, had won at least one battle in the turf war.