Because this topic seems to be generating a lot of controversy, I will do a bit of notebook dumping here to give everyone all the evidence available before they come to a verdict.  And then we can move on to other things.

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In case some of you missed this in the comments, here is Wendy Pedersen’s take on her neighbourhood, which she advocates for through the Carnegie Community Action Project.
FROM WENDY PEDERSEN
Hello. If you want to know what low-income DTES residents think about their neighbourhood, you can read this report: http://ccapvancouver.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/ccapvisionwebsm.pdf
Its called Nothing About Us [...]

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Vancouver’s defining neighbourhood has been in the limelight this past month, with two media outlets (the Province and the Globe and Mail) running extensive series on how to fix the neighbourhood, while police chief Jim Chu put out his own report on what to do.
The unspoken message behind all of this is, “Yikes, the world [...]

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Vancouver police brought out their 2009 business plan a few weeks ago, which was unusual in the numbers it attached to some of its efforts. Among them, police set a target of increasing ticketing for bylaw infractions in the Downtown Eastside by 20 per cent, ticketing for Safe Streets Act offences by 10 per cent, [...]

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Monte Paulsen asked a good question about my recent story on the Burnaby Centre for Mental Health & Addictions, which is a 100-bed facility out near BCIT that is pioneering an incredibly comprehensive and high level of care for those people whose problems with combos of mental illness, addiction, and physical disabilities are so severe [...]

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I got a chance recently to go out to the new Burnaby Centre for Mental Health & Addictions, the centre that was announced last February by Premier Gordon Campbell as part of a new push to treat the mentally ill + addicted + often homeless and physically sick.
It’s been open since June and taking on [...]

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To start the new year on a (somewhat) cheery note, I saw in my travels through the Downtown Eastside around Christmas Day that the beautiful new neon sign for the Pennsylvania Hotel — a replica of the sign that used to be on the building in the 20s — has gone up at Carrall and [...]

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