SQUATTERS PLAGUE ABBY NEIGHBOURHOOD

Some east Abbotsford residents are fed up with a boarded-up house that
they say is constantly being used as a drug house by transients.

But relief may be on the way.

Children have had to walk past the house in the 33000 block of Nelson
Avenue - near the McCallum Road intersection - that appears to be a
used by squatters for prostitution and drug use.

"It's really an ongoing problem," area resident Corinna Landsberger
told the Times. "We formed a Neighbourhood Watch group because there
were prostitutes and drug dealers.

"A couple of weeks ago I think they found someone inside there who was
almost dead," the mother of three said.

Landsberger said it has been at least 18 months that the home has been
the epicentre of many neighbourhood problems.

Landsberger said neighbours have called police numerous times and
they've come to the house and boarded it up.

Abbotsford Police Department spokesman Staff Sgt. John Davidson said
officers are familiar with the house.

"We have been down there a couple of times," Davidson said. "We've
chased people out of the house."

But Landsberger said that police have done all they
can.

"The problem is we used to call the police when the boards were down
to get them to come and board them up again," she said. "They don't do
that anymore. They want us to call the public works yard. Now they do
that."

However, the City of Abbotsford is working with the police, through
the multi-agency Integrated Services Team, to address the problem house.

"We are taking legal action against the owner," said Toireasa Strong,
Abbotsford's director of administration and corporate planning.

"This property is very familiar to us," she said, adding that both the
city and police have sunk a lot of taxpayer resources into trying to
secure the flop house.

"We've turned it over to our city solicitor because the owner is not
co-operating in keeping it secure," said Strong, who also acts in the
IST's enforcement arm.

Strong couldn't give any details of the case because of legal issues
surrounding court rules.

Landsberger is hoping that, for the children's sake, the solution
comes quickly.

"We're having drug problems going on here in the back lane. We're
having prostitutes here," she said. "That's where the neighbours
started to take action. We formed a Neighbourhood Watch group and we
started patrolling our neighbourhood because there were drug dealers
and prostitutes in there. It was really bad for a while."