ONE NEIGHBOURHOOD'S SUCCESS ANOTHER'S PROBLEM

To the editor:

A letter in your Mar. 3 edition from Mountain View residents claims
success in ridding their neighbourhood of criminal elements and
suggests some measures residents of the Sunset neighbourhood can take
to achieve the same success ("Mountain View cleanup a success story").

The letter writers fail to see the irony here, as it is very likely
that their "success" came at the expense of other neighbourhoods such
as Sunset.

Is it really a success when one neighbourhood merely pushes their
problems into other neighbourhoods? The social problems related to
prohibited drugs and prostitution do not disappear simply because one
neighbourhood manages to rid themselves of the most visible and
vulnerable participants, namely addicts and street workers. That has
been tried for a hundred years in Vancouver and the result has merely
been a revolving door of displacement from one area to another.

The Mountain View residents say that the key to their success has been
constant vigilance. Their neighbourhood, and many others, have gone
the way of vigilante justice. Until drug and prostitution laws are
repealed or reformed, we will continue to see this pattern played over
and over, proving the maxim: "The only thing we learn from history is
that we never learn from history."

Perry Bulwer,

Vancouver