NEIGHBOURHOOD WANTS SOME HELP

To the Editor,

Let me introduce you all to our neighbourhood down here in the south of
Nanaimo- Nob Hill.

It's easy to recognize, what with all the drugs, prostitution and poverty
related crimes.

I am sure you must all be rolling your eyes that I am even bringing it up.
After all, its not like we are supposed to want our neighbourhood to be
clean, or healthy or fit to let our children play in, right?

Here's the dilemma.

There are multitudes of homeowners and renters down here who do want such
things. We long for safe streets, free of needles, garbage, prostitutes and
addicts who stumble from one crack house to the next.

We make concerted efforts here to improve the surroundings, but find such
efforts often thwarted by circumstance and red tape.

There are such obvious problems here. We can't understand why they seem so
bitterly obvious to us and yet so overlooked by the City of Nanaimo.

How can one crack house be closed and the inhabitants merely move across
the street? How can one eyesore of a crack house burn and then be left
standing to become a squatter's paradise and refuse dump?

How do these properties continue to fester in our midst? How can the
prostitutes literally outnumber the residents walking in our own neighbourhood?

Do you know where, in this town, you can buy or sell drugs? (Heck, you can
even do your drugs right there.) Where you can pick up a prostitute, or
prostitute yourself, while being served free coffee? Where you can pitch a
tent or tarp under a No Loitering sign?

Why, it's right here at Victoria and Milton.

One day, only moments after my boyfriend left for work, there was a knock
at my door. I opened the door to a man who claimed to be a neighbour of
mine, nearly demanding money for gas to get to work.

When I informed him I had no cash, he insisted I must at least have bus fair.

I believe he saw my boyfriend leave for work and was really casing the
house for a break in. But even if he was panhandling, his tactics were
unnerving.

It is not the first time we have been approached at home or in our
neighbourhood for money, simply the most overt and aggressive time.

With housing prices what they are, homes here are those first time
homebuyers can afford, people who will put time and energy into making
these houses better.

Honestly though, who wants to buy down here now? Who wants to be ridding
their yard of weeds, needles, condoms and litter with a prostitute on the
sidewalk?

Who wants to have their children playing in the yard, exposed not only to
the prostitutes working just outside the gate, but also to the predatory
behaviour of the men prowling the neighbourhood looking to pick them up?

And mostly, why do we, the homeowners and the taxpayers have to put up with it?

These questions are not rhetorical. We expect answers from the city. We
expect help.

Leslie Hallberg, Nanaimo