Pubdate: Fri, 24 Nov 2000
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: The Vancouver Sun 2000
Contact:  200 Granville Street, Ste.#1, Vancouver BC V6C 3N3
Fax: (604) 605-2323
Website: http://www.vancouversun.com/
Series: Searching for solutions - Fix on the Downtown Eastside
http://www.mapinc.org/thefix.htm

PLEASE: SEND THESE PEOPLE AWAY

Lisa Lao lives in the Downtown Eastside for the same reasons that Don
Grandbois does. It's the cheapest housing in Vancouver, all that a
part-time hairdresser with two children can afford, and it's where her
community lives. Lisa, who came to Canada in 1993 from Guangzhou,
speaks only Cantonese.

She's one of the mothers who walks her children through the area, on
the way to school or on the way home after work. And she has no
sympathy for the addicts at all.

The hairdressing salon where she works, Prestige, at the corner of
Pender and Carrall, has been robbed twice recently. Her daughter,
Yvonne, is always scared, says Lisa, a stylish-looking woman who
speaks through an interpreter. She's frightened of the people who ask
them for money and the people who dig around on the sidewalk.

In Chinatown, the talk these days is that the mayor's plan means that
these addicts will be given free drugs. (Not actually true, but that's
the version here.)

Lisa thinks if that's the case, they should only be given drugs in
some isolated place far away. Chinatown is the worst part of Vancouver
now.

Why make it worse? Why not take all these people and give them some
place a long way away from this neighbourhood? 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake