These two images have been redacted as they show the address, and the highly-distinctive (wonderful, loveable) dog of a nearby resident.

This gentleman was generous with his time and knowledge, which was extensive. No NIMBY here, the man had volunteered at organizations like the ones he lives across the street from, and has every sympathy for their clients. He was on no moral high-horse, just talking problems to solve: impositions upon the neighbourhood that should be addressed, and can be solved without kicking them all out.

Briefly, here are the impositions:

• Overnight camping - tents have been set up in the parks
• "Street camping" - where pedestrians are blocked by people taking up sidewalk with tent-like structures
• Syringes - found in the dog park, in doorways
• Public Mental Illness - loud "whoopers" or swearers
• Sanitation - quite a lot of urine has been washed away, mornings; solid wastes have been found.
• Loitering - a seniors apartment is right beside the community centre, and groups waiting for it to open, make the seniors uncomfortable passing through.

Over here, these are the ideas we talked about for solutions. This is very much my summary, but I can say he didn't think the new centre has to go.

• Camping: "Sweeping" the park and street tents setups is a job, one that could apply anywhere in Vancouver. It has to be done here, the "park is closed at nights". It's a kid's playground park. And it is getting done now, that I could see. There was no camping that night. The "sweeping" of many places will have to continue until we get a better solution for homelessness. Homelessness is not the fault of the service centres.
• Public Mental Illness Since we have "whoopers" and "F***-screamers" going past our very West-End location, (possibly the same guys), we need mental health care to benefit every neighbourhood, also a bigger issue than Emery Barnes Park.
• Syringes Sweeping these from the dog park, the sidewalk corners and alleys, strikes me as a job that goes with running these centres. They have staff. Or another service could do daily, or more, sweeps of blocks nearby them.

Here, I'd like to mention the larger, structural solutions that the gentleman with the gentledog offered me from his front stoop:

Move the Entrance
Clients pile up in front of the entrance, which is right on the corner. There's generous space for a few, but it's not enough, so they start impeding traffic and aggravating the residents. Moving the entrance to the alley, is all that he thinks necessary, having worked in these kinds of places. It would be tricky (see below).

Take Over St. Paul's Hospital
As noted above. It's a huge hospital, a fraction of it could provide all these services, away from these residences, just a way better location. Four blocks away.

"Prasad's Law": public health can always find money to concentrate money, spend capital, to buy a building or an MRI machine, but struggles to spend operating money - distribute money to people, like hiring nurses.

I did not see a whole full-time job policing this area, in either the "crime" sense of "policing" or the "tidy up" sense. Not even a 5 days for 8 hours job, much less 7x24.

If this centre is close to being forced out, the promise that they'd spend as much time cleaning up to a half-block away, as they do their own sidewalk area (see below), would address most of the needle and sanitation problems.

Approaching the corner of Helmcken and Seymour, where the two services are across Helmcken from each other, and the Park across Seymour from both - southbound on Seymour. A sleeping person in the shadows at right. He slept there the whole three hours.

Looking across Seymour at the corner with the AIDS centre, and The Gathering Place community centre, across Helmcken from that, behind the white vehicle. Pretty quiet.

Emery Barnes Park, the third corner, right behind me as I took the previous shot. Also very quiet at 1:30PM.

By far the most-business for Emery Barnes is children. A third of the adults have strollers. The playground was the only thing in the area busy all afternoon, and the next morning.

Back across Seymour, this guy sat for about two hours, right in front of the entrance to the building that is suing the Centre. He was fussing with clothing, and with his injuries - large bandages on both legs.

This is looking along Seymour to the north, back the way I came, the sleeping guy right behind me. Empty, mostly.

Looking west up Helmcken, towards St. Paul's, the whole corner and street occupations in view.

Back to the park, still quiet, suntanners.

The fountain end of the water feature shows the "Park closed" sign, making police sweeps completely legit.

At the other end of the block from the AIDS Centre on Seymour, is the nicest coffee shop I've been in, lately. The barista had just two complaints. There have been a few annoying people come into the place in the morning, looking for a bathroom or handouts, and some tents in the park became a problem at one point. That was about it. He shrugged.

People moved, and did other business, while the guy on the sidewalk continued to fuss with his injuries and his sneakers.

This is the alley behind The Gathering Place, and there was definite drug use in progress, but they really kept to themselves.

This shot is the length of Helmcken between the last two, the alley entrance on my left, the front entrance to the Gathering Place at the end of the block ahead. On the right, four tables set up, where small groups, or individuals who studiously ignore each other, set up to eat food, smoke from bongs, and for the nearest table, partially tent it over.

Rotating another 90 degrees to my right, the alley gang are now at my back, the picnic tables to the left, and this is the view down the alley where the neighbour wishes the AIDS centre would move its entrance. Again, a few alley people, no doubt doing drugs.

Seymour entrance quiet save a couple of guys in wheelchairs.

The water feature on the east of the park again, often more busy.

Playground seen from the east edge.

Looking north from the southwest. The big open space is where kids run around with the (leashed) dogs.

Taken from the alley where the local wishes the AIDS entrance could be, the drug session in the alley across continues.

Both centres' entrances in sight

I got a seat at one of those picnic tables, it was so quiet. I witnessed some unpleasantness: the retreating man with the expensive-looking backpack hurled many swear words at the old guy pushing along a trash barrel with a hose coming out of it. Not sure what either that, or the swearing, was about. The old guy did not reply to the nastiness.

This was the best bit, the whole three hours. Two kids started running up and down the water feature, splashing, and a third toddler joined in.

A proud grandpa gave me a smile as I snapped all three. All the readers, and the two card-players (that's the two ladies facing each other across a table at far right) were all laughing and smiling at them. I was falling in love with Emery Barnes Park.

I should mention the super-brief "interview" I had with one mom. She'd never had a problem in the park, not her toddler, personally. She's seen a few people two avoid, two people doing drugs in the park one morning. A colleague of hers, who lives in a nearby building, had mentioned hating the people sometimes loitering outside its entrance in the morning.

Back to the street, guy still fiddling with bandages.

More than an hour in, now, and back to the main area, the intersection where you can see both entrances. Still quiet.

As mentioned, residential people flow in and out the whole time. I took this shot of these kids, not because they are street people, but because I didn't know that afforable cars had those (stupid) "gull-wing" doors, which I admit look cool. These kids are going into the building that is suing, ignoring the street-guy and his bandages just behind me.

At far left, a fire hydrant powers a drinking fountain and hand-washing station, which gets use. Picnic table still available.

A few people finally started lounging about the AIDS centre entrance, as apparently becomes too much at some times. Not now.

The park got busier as 4PM approached, nearly every bench in use. Never saw a park so well-used as this one before.

This is the off-leash part of the park, which got busy at times, mostly tomorrow morning. This is where some needles have been found, offering great concern about dogs stepping on them or trying to eat them.

My best shot of where the nice neighbour said the entrance should be, in the back alley, get people away from Seymour and its residents.

Tricky, because you can see that this is where the architect put a big building vent, and the loading dock. Changing those into an entrance is a tall order. Not impossible, I just think person-hours are cheaper.

The back alley had a couple of little groups in it.

This second group, basically behind the building suing, had encamped a little bit. Look close, somebody is sleeping, sitting up, but bent way over, at right.

In the park, around the other side of the building and across a street, nothing but kids and dogs. It's remarkable how the two worlds overlap each other, like pages in a book.

Over on the east side of the park, I think at least two of the three sleeping in the sun are poor. Certainly the nearest one. The young guy in the ballcap, I think was just local, and nodded off in the warmth. They were all gone by the time I left, 45 minutes later. Just napping.

Some napping on the sidewalks, too. Fentanyl-powered naps, perhaps.

This is the BACK entrance of the building suing. Oddly enough, they have the idea of a back entrance down pat, whereas the AIDS centre doesn't.

I grabbed a last coffee, just a few shots to show what a nice place it is. You have to buy to use the washroom, $4 giving me a privilege the street people cannot afford.

I didn't use the privilege the next morning, and barely made it home, giving me some sympathy for that part of their plight.

This is the entrance to that "seniors residence", next door to The Gathering Place, and site of, apparently, many a urine-washing.

Shadow and poor photography don't show the guy sleeping on the bench; but sitting up, and I don't know if he was just a non-homeless napper.

Goodbye for today, with another wistful look at where the entrance should be.

I started off the next morning, with the same approach. The guy who slept here all 3 hours yesterday was gone. Another guy was sleeping there instead, with the wheelchair beside him for added pathos.

The picnic tables were all in use, The Gathering Place still closed (it opened before nine, though, somewhere near 8:40 PDT)

I'd come in the morning because both the neighbour and the park lady, AND the barista, were emphatic that all was worst in the mornings. Maybe 8AM was too late to catch the very worst hanging-about, though I'd think that worst just before the services opened.

But all was still very quiet, around the AIDS centre. It doesn't open until 11AM, it says, so I'm not sure what people would be doing at 6AM.

All well at the nice coffee shop, end of block.

The park, however, was simply bustling with dogs. I counted 10 in the main park area, socializing, as were their owners.

The off-leash had four more.

I'd encountered solid waste at last: dog-based, one owner was a scofflaw. Well, I suppose it could have been human. (foreground). It was gone half an hour later; Yaletown has some good citizens.

This shot and next confirm something about Emery Barnes park: the dog owners synchronize. They all show up around the same time - 8AM sharp - because dogs just love that.

But by 7:20, the dogs were gone! Synchronized. I've seen the same behaviour at many parks popular with dogs, including the one in front of my house for 30 years, back in Calgary. They'd text each other when they were leaving home.

I didn't have a picture of it, yesterday, but the guy with the bandages, after a couple of hours, had his legs and clothes all good at last, picked himself up and walked off with his pack. Not back in the morning.

The intersection was very quiet, is all I can say.

A slowly-growing group waited for The Gathering Place to open, not large enough to be any problem for anybody.

There were people sitting and swaddling and sleeping at the picnic tables, but I couldn't call it camping.

The gent walking away from the camera displays a common feature of this area: mobility challenges. That great prosthetic gave him an almost-normal gait, but there were three wheelchairs in use among the small groups against the two building sides.

At left, commerce in progress. The people up against the AIDS centre were no impediment to the large tourist bus that pulled up and took in a crowd from the nearby hotel behind me. The sidewalk is very wide because the building is set back from other buildings.

Guy is out to walk his dog, which has an offleash area to romp in. Instead, the dog sits patiently besides him as he gets lost in his phone. This is the drama level I was down to.

Finally, The Gathering Place opens about 8:45, these people all go inside for whatever services, and the sleeping guy wakes up beside his wheelchair to start whatever day you have in that situation.

There's no building, about half-way north on Seymour, away from the disputed area. You can go right into the alley, which is where the little group was, the day before. Two workmen put on their vests, as the group sits in the sun. They didn't seem to be actually doing drugs at this hour.

A few dozen yards towards the two Centres takes us again to where the alley-groups were doing drugs the previous afternoon. Totally empty right now. And clean! I'll say this for the alleys of even The Worst Intersection In Yaletown: they're free of litter, not even a newspaper blowing.

I looked closer, and the fabric in foreground are not tents, no people; it's shopping carts full of possessions that have been wrapped up tight, probably to prevent anything falling off, or being pilfered.

The Gathering Place had a service that amazed me: a private library. This is not VPL, it's their own collection of books and movies. I have to say, though, that I didn't see anybody in this room on either visit. Readers, they are not.

Well, bored with inserting comments. My last few minutes document that this was the quietest time of them all, but look a few more down:

The signs along the sometimes-packed area beside the AIDS centre advise all that the place is pressure-washed daily, rinsed twice more. The washing also, obviously, is a "sweep" that removes all tenting.

I could come back at 11 some time, see if it is busy as it opens.