The City of Nanaimo and the Downtown Nanaimo Partnership have joined forces to clean up downtown...and guess where they put all those people who made you feel unsafe? On my street. So enjoy your new blue jeans, your overpriced latte, your browse through Commercial Drive while my neighbours and I live with the open air drug market sanctioned by the city so that you may safely stroll downtown. When you are finished shopping, get in your car, lock your doors and drive on up here and see what has been done here on your behalf.So that you can enjoy your one hour downtown, we must deal with drug trade/sex trade, intimidation, filth, threats of violence, constant barrage of noise(fights, cars cruising hookers, pushers hawking their drugs, hookers calling out to Johns, etc,) twenty four hours a day. The City, the RCMP, the DNP all say that it is a problem that cannot be fixed overnight although they created this particular problem here overnight. By hiring those very security guards that make you feel safe downtown and using them to herd all their old problems one block past downtown,to my street, to my home, all those things that once kept you from shopping safely now keep me from living safely.
Now I ask you, how sacred is your home to you? Don't we deserve that as well? We all live in Nanaimo. We're all neighbours. You should be as outraged as we are. Shouldn't you?
Take one moment to write to Mayor and Council, or the Downtown Nanaimo Partnership...or the paper...or whoever...to tell them that this situation is completely unacceptable. Please.
11 comments:
I'm all over it.
Rick Hyne's letter in this morning's paper was another slap in the face to your neighbourhood. He went on to talk about working together to find "solutions"etc. Coming from him? That's rich.
Oh, and when they have finished driving down your neighbourhoods' property values and snapped up all of the prime heritage houses and lots with views at bargin prices (all under the guise of holding companies registered in eastern Canada)(remember how the northend was built?), guess where they will push the crackhead/methheads/hookers next?
Harewood, of course.
Olly, don't take the papers anymore...Rick is an ASSHAT. We have dealt with him personally and there are few people who have ever made me want to slap them as quickly as he makes me want to slap him. He is the slimiest of the slimeballs out there.
It must be horrid for you and your neighbours. You are educating me - living where I do in North Nanaimo I never see any of the things you put up with. These people should not be in a residential area....
Yes, isn't the south end grand?
You have so much of my sympathy. We're a little further up from downtown, but our vehicle and veranda gets rifled through sometimes nightly. My husband was foolish enough to leave his $150 work boots on the front porch last month and they were gone by morning. He just bought them THAT day.
We can't even park in the space provided in front of our house, as we came out one morning to find someone had taken a boot to our sideview mirror. Another $200 for deductable to fix that...
Oh and did I mention that it's okay because we're rich? Yeah.
But I'm sure the daily hell you're experiencing is much worse than our stuff. I am so sorry this is happening to you, and your neighbors. I'd like to write a letter, but where to begin??? I'd do it for you, if it would help.
(I am glad they aren't plaguing the downtown so bad now though, I was finding it very threatening just taking my kids to the library, once I had to avoid a man who verbally accosted me in front of my children just because I wasn't interested in talking to him or giving him money -- he was pissed! Not that I want them near you, either though.)
And that's one putrid lookin' salmon!
Krista, I don't know if it will move council to do anything...nothing seems to move this council to do anything for anything other than big business...but maybe if enough people from other neighbourhoods voice their disdain for this practice of corralling all this right here in a residential neighbourhood, they know other people are noticing...I believe they think we are invisible down here...until tax time.
that's one big stink, ain't it?
That fish is SCARY! I wish there was something I could do to help, but living in Georgia I don't think they would listen to my compaints...
I know you will continue the fight and I'll do whatever I can to help.
What a nightmare. I think that most people just don't care because it doesn't affect THEM. It's the whole NIMBY thing - not in my back yard. The powers that be are only concerned about the safety of shoppers, tourists, whatever...They make the problem someone else's, because HEY, it isn't THEIR problem.
Stuff like this is everyone's problem. Nobody should have to live in fear.
What CAN we do to help? I hate the fact that you are living this way. It is so unfair.
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