Residents call for action brings change at Furby community garden

My name is Jacqueline Hunter. I'm a resident of Furby. I moved in two years ago. It's meant to be a community space where people can come garden but as you can see it's filled with On an average day, it's filled with trash, there's needles, we've encountered worse human waste, there's graffiti, and it's just, usually it's filled with people abusing drugs, so it can't be a community garden. Now, as we walk in, I'm counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9 garden boxes, correct? Now, looking at them right now, they look in disarray. Anyway, when you first moved into the area and started cleaning them up, Were they like this in that condition? They were like this, and I mean, to be honest, I never reached the point where I could work the flower beds. I spent all my time, hours and hours, just cleaning up garbage and needles. We had three extra-large garbage beds full of garbage. That was not the extent of it. There was human waste, human feces, needles in the garden beds, on the ground, cigarette butts. It was... It was awful. But we got it all cleaned up, and I went back less than a week later. I went back with the hopes of starting the process of turning the beds, weeding, whatnot, and it was just full of garbage again. It was full of needles within a week. It's incredibly sad. This space should be a place for the community to come together, the people that live in apartments to have the opportunity to have their outdoor space, grow their own food, and it's just not possible the way it is. My name is Cheryl Martins and we initially moved here in 1993. Well, we sent the letter out because this summer has been a bit of a nightmare. You know, listening to Jacqueline, she's been more experienced with it over time. I really noticed that in the last two months there was sort of sales at one house, sale of drugs at one house and then people would go to the garden to use. And so that sort of constant path, I can see it very clearly from my upstairs window, right? It was just constant. Like I was making a police report and there were eight people during the 15 minutes that it took to do the police report. Like it's just one in, two in, in and out, right? The city police say these problems are complex and take time to address. What do you say to that? They've had lots of time, I feel. I've lived here for 30 years and we've had problems that whole time. The city could do things with these vacant properties And Cindy Gilroy has fought to try and do that. But let's get, we need public housing, let's put public housing, let's put, even build houses that then get sold, you know, so that there's some renewal, something that brings some life back. No excuses. We need action. And I know there's, you know, it's great to have compassion for people that are suffering from drug abuse and drug addiction, but we need some compassion for our community. I moved into downtown because I I don't want to see downtown Winnipeg die. We've been talking about that for years. I bought a house here. I have a business here. I take care of the community. I garden. I'm doing everything I can, and it just feels like we've been left, the residents have been left to deal with the problem that the city should be dealing with. Obviously, closing the community garden is not something that we want to have happen for our community. Fencing it off is a solution. It's sad that we even have to do that.