COPS BEGIN CRACKDOWN ON CRACK HOUSES

New Police Unit Empowered To Evict Tenants, But Critics Say Law
'Criminalizes Poverty'

In Halifax, we are fortunate to have hundreds of bright, talented
graduates from our local universities every year, each looking to
make a mark in his or her chosen field. Today through Saturday, we
are pleased to showcase some of the best work the University of
King's College graduating class produced for its investigative
reporting course.

Tracey Earle lives in the south end of Halifax, next door to a
reputed drug house.

The South Park Street resident has found syringes and narcotics
bottles scattered across her property. She's witnessed young people
smoking drugs in the backyard next door, and fights on the sidewalk.

Last May, she saw eight people walk to the side of the rooming house
on South Park Street. They received what she suspects were drugs
through a hole in the screen of a street-level window. Within a few
weeks, she says the term "crack house" was scrawled in marker on the
house's front door.

Mainline Needle Exchange, an organization that provides clean
syringes and crack pipes to drug users, visits the house on a weekly basis.

"Having a needle exchange program coming to the house next to mine
every week doesn't exactly make me think I live in a great
neighbourhood," Earle says.

She considers the house a blight on the community, an unnecessary
eyesore on a main thoroughfare of the city's south end.

The front steps of the white rooming house are crumbling and
street-level windows are boarded. Garbage is strewn along the south
side of the house and into the backyard.

"If there are folks that have addiction issues and have no resources,
living in a place with broken windows, garbage all over the place,
illegal activities taking place won't turn their life around," says Earle.

"There is nothing good about houses like that. They serve no function
in our society."

A new law the province passed last December aims to root out drug
houses like this one. But some experts say the problems will simply
move elsewhere unless the government provides some level of
supervised housing for drug users.

The Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act empowers a new police
unit to remove drug dealers and users from houses. The unit is
staffed with three investigators, a manager of operations and a
director who have policing backgrounds.

The unit, which became operational a few weeks ago, will act on
complaints and collect information on the consumption, use, sale or
exchange of illegal drugs.

If the unit finds tenants are habitually committing crimes that are
having an adverse effect on the community, it can ask property owners
to evict the tenants.

The unit may also request a court order to have the property closed
for up to 90 days.

The investigative unit and the law that supports it were first
established in Manitoba in 2001. To date, that unit has shut down 214
operations - 190 for drug offences.

Justice Minister Murray Scott is confident the Nova Scotia unit will
be an effective tool for law-enforcement efforts to rid communities
of drug problems.

"People in Nova Scotia are tired of illegal activity in their
neighbourhoods," he said in an interview. "Drugs are causing a lot of
problems, particularly for young people in the schools. So we're
taking every step to curb that type of illegal activity."

While the province has been assembling its new unit, the owner of the
South Park Street rooming house has been trying to clean up the property.

Family-owned Loucar Properties Ltd. has been removing problem
tenants, screening future ones and renovating the house.

"We kicked out the majority of the problems and fixed up the building
and got it up to code," says co-owner Julien Carette. "Obviously,
there's going to be some problems, but we don't have the cops calling
us. I'd say there's little to none."

Neighbours say the landlord's efforts are working. Earle says some of
the major problems have largely subsided over the past several
months. There is less evidence of drug sales, she says, and less
traffic moving in and out.

A Fenwick Street neighbour, who asked to remain anonymous, says
people frequently walked through his backyard to allegedly buy drugs
from a South Park Street rooming-house resident. But the neighbour
says the resident has been removed from the property, and took the
problem with him.

Carette says his family is also cleaning up its Mitchell Street
properties, where drugs have been a problem for years. Carette says
at the end of March, the family evicted the last two tenants involved
with illegal drugs at two addresses on Mitchell Street.

But it wasn't easy. Carette says the family had the basement
apartments at both addresses condemned to remove the tenants, who
were reluctant to leave.

"We've been dealing with this stuff for too long," he said.

The president of a provincial landlords association says the
difficulty lies with the Residential Tenancy Board.

Joe Metlege of the Investment Property Owners Association of Nova
Scotia says when problem tenants refuse to leave the property after
they've been evicted, landlords have to file a claim with the board
and argue their case at a hearing. The process can take four to six
months with an appeal.

Landlords, says Metlege, face a much higher burden of proof than
their tenants when arguing a case before the board.

The new provincial police unit may absorb some of that burden. But
the root of the problem might remain.

Rick Munroe has been addicted to crack cocaine since he was in his
early 30s. The 44-year-old Halifax man is trying to kick the
addiction he says has brought him to "rock bottom."

He has two sons now in their 20s, but he hasn't seen them for years.
He says his addiction prevented him from watching them grow up.

Crack "destroys you. It not only takes all your money, you'll lose
your family, your job; you lose everything," he says. "I know that
there is a way that I can get out of this. There's gotta be, because
if I don't, my life is over."

Munroe has frequented drug houses in Halifax, though he won't say
where they are. As long as people are still using, he says, drug
houses will support their addictions.

Police efforts to remove drug houses are futile, he says. "You'll
never stop these guys." And after police raid one house, he says,
another will crop up in its place.

Const. Jeff Carr of the Halifax

Regional Police says the force takes drug houses seriously. He says
the new unit will add another tool to the law enforcement repertoire.

But Carr says the unit won't do anything to help stem addiction
problems, which may mean that drug users will simply move to another
neighbourhood after the unit cleans out a house.

"If someone is addicted to drugs and they're made to move somewhere
else, that doesn't address their addiction problem at all," says
Carr. "It's a piece in a puzzle; law enforcement is a piece in a
larger puzzle."

Carr says a range of organizations across the province, from police
to social-service agencies, work together to address the root of the
drug problem.

Bernard Smith has been trying to help people with drug addictions
receive treatment and gain employment for three years. The manager of
the Spring Garden Area Business Association says it's part of his job
to address the social problems that affect the high-end shopping district.

Smith says his team has delivered food to residents of both the
Mitchell and South Park street houses. He says people with low
incomes and drug problems are attracted to properties such as those
because there aren't many alternatives.

"Until you provide alternate accommodation, I don't think you can
close them," he says. "There is an extreme need in this province for
adequate accommodation for addicted people and people of the
lower-residential spectrum."

The province, says Smith, needs to introduce supervised housing for
low-income and drug-addicted people. He says he submitted a proposal
to the government several years ago that would have seen the
construction of 26 supervised units, but only received a portion of
the necessary funding.

The government-funded Metro Non-Profit Housing Association, however,
provides some housing for people with addictions.

The association runs two apartment-style buildings on Primrose Street
in north Dartmouth with a total of 24 units. Drug use is prohibited
in the buildings and the association helps addicts create a recovery plan.

If tenants consent to a plan, they may stay in the house. If they
relapse, they may be evicted, though the decision is left to the
discretion of other residents and association officials.

The houses aren't monitored with support staff, though executive
director Carol Charlebois says she regularly meets with people on
recovery plans.

Paul O'Hara says that isn't enough. The social worker with the North
End Community Health Centre says he's been pushing the province to
introduce a constantly supervised housing arrangement, but hasn't
received any positive response.

O'Hara's plan would see the construction of a three-storey building
with a shelter at the bottom floor, a rooming house on the middle
floor and an independent living arrangement at the top floor. The
house would encourage tenants to drop their addictions by rewarding
good behaviour with improved housing arrangements.

Without more "progressive" housing alternatives for people with drug
problems, O'Hara says the drug problem in Halifax will persist. Those
evicted from drug houses under the new policing unit will simply move
to another community.

"We're criminalizing poverty," he says. "If you want to do something
about the issue, it should be more around trying to provide
opportunities to break out of the cycle through a harm reduction program."

The new law "might change the street, but the problem is just going
to move somewhere else."

An officer with the investigative unit in Manitoba defends police
efforts to remove undesirable tenants from neighbourhoods.

"It's an unacceptable position for you as a citizen to come to a
department of justice and say there is a drug house next door that is
adversely affecting your life ... and for us to say to you, 'Well, if
we close down that drug house, it might move somewhere else; so
you're just going to have to live with it,' " says Al Cameron.

"That is an unacceptable view; we try to look at one neighbourhood at a time."

Until you provide alternative accommodation, I don't think you can move them.

Bernard Smith, president of Spring Garden Business Association

Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods Act

Description

Proclaimed in December 2006, the act gives power to a new law
enforcement unit to remove tenants whose habitual criminal activity
is having an adverse affect on the community or neighbourhood.

The team will have the authority to request that landlords evict
problem tenants. The team may also apply for a court order to have
the property closed for up to three months.

Since the unit uses civil laws to remove tenants, the burden of proof
is much lower than investigations involving the Criminal Code.

Crimes under the unit's jurisdiction

- - Possession, use, consumption, sale or exchange of a controlled substance

- - Sale of illegal liquor

- - Illegal gaming

- - Prostitution

- - Child sexual abuse

Historical Context

Similar legislation was passed in Manitoba in May 2001. The unit
there, which has grown to eight officers, has received roughly 1,470
complaints, and about 1,330 involved alleged drug offences.
Investigations into the vast majority of complaints have not produced
sufficient evidence to support the claims.

The unit has requested a court order to close a property in only one
case. In that instance, the owner of the property was allowing
members of a street gang to continue trafficking drugs through the house.

Since the law was introduced in Manitoba, governments in Saskatchewan
and the Yukon have passed similar legislation.