NORTH SURREY CRACKING APART

The crack dealer sits across the road, in the shelter of a small stand of
trees.

A couple of hookers keep him company as he scans the road for customers
and, undoubtedly, the police.

In the space of 20 minutes, a dozen people approach him, dig in their jeans
for cash and leave.

His customers resemble the neighbourhood, seedy and rough looking. This
day, most come on foot, but one man arrives on a bicycle. He lingers with
the dealer for a minute or two, then peddles away, a moment's oblivion
cupped in his hand.

There are others, though. An dark green Ford Explorer SUV pulls up and
stops in the street. The dealer gets up, walks over to the passenger-side
window and, seconds later, the expensive vehicle and its driver disappear
north along 135A Street.

A white Chevy minivan drives past without stopping, then returns a couple
of minutes later. The driver taps the horn as he passes in front of the
dealer's stand, then pulls into the parking lot of an adjacent building.
The crack merchant saunters over, a brief exchange takes place and the van
is gone.

Kris Kalstad's building sits on one of the meanest of Surrey's streets - a
one-block stretch infested with whores, crack dealers and their customers.

The small building in the 10600-block of 135A Street has some office space
on the ground floor and six residential suites upstairs. Kalstad has been
landlord there for nearly 20 years but he's had enough. He wants out.

Kalstad claims revenue from the building has fallen by $60,000 a year
because almost nobody - neither businesses nor residential tenants - wants
to deal with the corruption out on the street.

"He's there all the time," Kalstad said, gesturing towards the crack dealer.

Only two of the office spaces and a couple of the suites are occupied, he
said, and he can't rent the rest. Prospective tenants don't linger on the
phone once he tells them the address.

"They find out where it is and 'click', they're gone. I used to have a
thriving business here, but it went by the wayside because nobody's going
to put up with that," Kalstad said, pointing to the street out front.

Finding a purchaser for the well-kept building isn't any easier since
nobody wants to buy his problems. Kalstad has been trying to sell for a
while now, but no one's come along with a good offer.

"I would love to sell it, I am so sick and tired of Surrey. I'm over 60 now
and I don't need this crap. You've got to be pretty stupid to invest in
Surrey."

Kalstad fixes the blame for his woes firmly on the South Fraser Community
Services Society, a non-profit organization which provides a number of
services for the down-and-out in a building just a few doors away. Among
others, there's a drop-in centre, a street youth program, a wet/cold
weather shelter and an HIV/AIDS support program.

Kalstad's beef is with a needle exchange program that's one of the services
offered by a free medical clinic in the centre. He claims it draws addicts
into the neighbourhood who hang around outside his building, buying and
selling drugs and scaring away his tenants.

"The only thing that will solve this problem is to shut it down," Kalstad
declared.

Society development officer Jim Bennett disagrees.

"The people who use the needle exchange are in and out so fast. They don't
hang around the area," Bennett said.

"That's been a drug-selling strip for years. They were doing that long
before we opened a needle exchange. There's crack cocaine in the area -
that's not injectable - and that's got nothing to do with us."

The problems faced by Kalstad and the rest of Surrey have been created by
the tremendous growth the city has experienced over the past 10 years,
Bennett said.

"I guess the big city has big problems."

Mayor Doug McCallum believes too many services like those offered by the
society are concentrated in Whalley. He wants them spread more evenly
throughout the city to reduce the negative impact in the north.

Bennett said his organization is located there because that's where the
demand is. In fact, he said, when the centre was being planned 10 years
ago, the city wanted it placed right where it is.

"They said put it up in that area and off the main drag, off King George
Highway. That was because there were already people coming into the area to
buy drugs," Bennett said.

Scattering facilities all over the city will just mean having people going
from one neighbourhood to the next in search of the services they need,
Bennett said.

"Ten years ago, everybody said put them all in the same locale. Now they're
saying spread them out. We'd just have these people tramping all over the
city."

No matter who's right, Kalstad is still left with his problem. He can't
rent his building and he can't sell it. It's an investment going to seed,
like the neighbourhood it occupies.

He, like thousands of other Surrey residents living with drugs and
prostitution in their neighbourhoods, is left to ask: Who is going to help
me, and when?