Pubdate: Tue, 12 Oct 2004
Source: Maple Ridge Times (CN BC)
Copyright: 2004 Lower Mainland Publishing Group Inc
Contact:  http://www.mrtimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1372
Author: Tom Barnes

IT'S HELL IN UNIT 8

The reek of rotten food, urine and other indescribable odours are the
first thing you notice stepping into Unit 8.

And just as your nose comes to grips with the staggering stench, the
eyes are filled with an equally disturbing series of images.

The kitchen is thick with flies. Hyperdermic needles litter the floor.
Blood is splattered on the counters and walls. Filthy plates of food
lay on the floor and everywhere there are cheap glass pipes used to
smoke crack and crystal meth.

There are also children's toys and a little girl's
doll.

Tacked to the walls are running lists of who owes who money and who's
stolen what and what's left to be robbed and from where.

The items on the lists are the same items local police routinely
report going missing from garages and homes - bikes, boat motors, lawn
mowers, rings and other items that are easy to move.

Also inked on the walls are short poems that must have meant something
to whoever wrote them. They aren't pleasant, nor are they optimistic.
The writings smack of addiction, wanting, loathing and fear.

Unit 8 is hell.

Almost everything in the place is either broken, stained, cracked or
unhinged. The disparity and desperation is palpable.

Unit 8 is one of 20 in an apartment block located at the south end of
Fraser Street - perhaps the most depressed area in Maple Ridge.

Last week, property managers finally gave the tenants of Unit 8 the
boot - the last they say of what has been an ongoing problem with drug
peddlers and users that have, at times, held the other residents under
siege. Nightly fights, shady activity at all hours of the day, people
constantly coming and going, and threats have all become commonplace
to the residents of the building.

And then there are the rumours.

Stories of violence and degradation, the worst of which circulated
last week about a woman or young girl that had been tied up and raped
for three days in one of the apartments.

They might be rumours, but everyone the TIMES spoke to last Tuesday
had heard it.

Wayne and Angela Sherwood are one of those who have heard the rumours.
The young family has for the last three months lived two doors down
from Unit 8 before the addicts were evicted.

They say they've seen up close the devastating effects hard drug use
can have. In their small, mostly dirt backyard, their young children
have come across used condoms, discarded needles and razor blades.

Wayne says that one night a man came busting through his front door
looking to settle a score. He had the wrong apartment - he was looking
for someone in Unit 8.

He's thankful, he says, that he was home at the time and his wife and
kids weren't alone.

The drug selling and violence, Sherwood says, have been so bad on some
nights that he dared not leave for his nightshift, skipping a day's
pay to be close to his family.

"People getting chased with baseball bats...it's a neverending cycle,"
he says.

While the tenants of Unit 8 have been sent packing, they haven't gone
far. That's because they have nowhere to go.

Last week, just hours after the property manager finally got the last
of the tenants and their meager belongings out of the house, they
simply set up camp in the back alley.

Piles of furniture, clothes, and beds stacked 10-feet high could be
seen from the second floor window of Unit 8. Twice during a tour the
TIMES took of the apartment, the property manager was in the back
alley, arguing with them to leave. It's a tense atmosphere, one where
violence could erupt at any moment.

At night the property manger (who asked not to be named) said he dares
not leave his suite without a large flashlight and baseball bat.

"Not to kill them," he says, adding," just to knock them out" if they
jump him.

The teenager he's hired for the undesirable job of cleaning up Unit 8
carries a large hunting knife on his hip.

Of the residents the TIMES spoke to, the problem with drugs and
everything that comes with them at the apartment block is to be placed
squarely on the shoulders of the man that owns the property.

They say he is responsible for renting to addicts and dealers and they
want prospective tenants better screened from now on.

"The problems are because of the people he brings here," a man says.
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