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VICTORIA, BC (September 20, 2007) - Katherine Jones serves hot soup and sandwiches at the Our Place soup kitchen in Victoria, BC, Thursday.

The friction isn't constant but at times it's red hot. It is generated by the conflict between doing good and respecting the needs of those who have no escape from charitable efforts that play out, literally, in their backyard.

For many of the years I have been living in a Mount Pleasant condo, the conflict has been between residents of my building and leaders of the Tenth Avenue Alliance Church, which sits south of the building across a parking lot no wider than four lanes of traffic.

At issue: the Monday night soup kitchen in the church, which brings clients past the entrance of my building. There's also a Tuesday afternoon drop-in. Noise from boisterous participants in youth groups doesn't help, but the anti-poverty matters are the focus of the issue. Residents of my building say more could be done to deal with issues of noise and minor disorder.

The dialogue is something that many Vancouverites will go through themselves, thanks to the direction disclosed in a report by my colleague Frances Bula this week. Five neighbourhoods outside Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, she wrote, will be priority destinations for homeless shelters and permanent units in the next three years as part of the city's new housing plan. Neighborhoods will be selected in the fall based on information about where homeless populations are clustering in Vancouver.

There's a vast gap between a soup kitchen or drop-in program and a homeless shelter or permanent units, but it seems to me there may be lessons in the search for accommodation between my condo and the Alliance church. (Full disclosure: My wife and I once volunteered at the soup kitchen to see what it was all about.)

"We want to help the homeless, but it's just as important to be a good neighbour," said Tara King, a member of my condo strata, speaking for members of the body.

On this matter, both sides are people of abundant goodwill. On one side, there's the church's commitment to helping the disadvantaged – as old as its 72-year presence on the block. On the other, there are the consequences of that commitment to the residents of my four-storey condo.

Everyone is aware of homelessness – people on the streets in virtually every neighbourhood of the city. And there are also soup-kitchen clients who have homes but few resources. It seems fair for everyone to accept the services that contribute to easing the suffering, but there needs to be compromise to make this work.

Vancouver Councillor Kerry Jang, familiar with the Alliance church situation, agrees there are lessons to learn from it. "Tenth Avenue? They demonstrated there was clearly a need in the area, and how important management plans and discussions with residents should be. It's clear, open communication, absolutely transparent, which makes a difference."

As for the city's plan for the new shelters and services, they would be "true community agreements," he said, so the neighbourhood has a line of communication to someone in power who can affect change in response to concerns.

Ken Shigematsu, a senior pastor at the Alliance church for 15 years, says the church has tried to accommodate its neighbours with mediated meetings over program concerns, and a "good neighbour agreement" of commitments that include promised patrols of the church perimeter, and placing garbage cans outside the building.

He speaks of "understandable anxieties" among area residents, and, offering his advice for the city, counsels neighbourhood meetings, the good-neighbor agreements, and the use of a third-party mediator to help the discussions.

Everyone sees his or her own little piece of things. For me, the soup kitchen largely means strangers, a little bedraggled from life on the streets, occasionally drifting away quietly after finishing their meals at the church. But they don't disrupt the neighbourhood, and they have done nothing to change my opinion that Mount Pleasant – and this building – is the best place I've lived in Vancouver.

The clients of church poverty programs are largely silent, and the occasional noise comes from parishioners and youth-group members, leaving the building loudly, who should know better.

But the condo strata reports a more complex reality of noise and bad behaviour. Although they are mindful of "noble aspirations" of trying to make the world a better place, they have advice for those who visit the church. "Start being our neighbour and respect the fact that we live here, you only visit. A home is much greater then just a space," Ms. King told me in an e-mail when I asked her about the pieces of things I may not see.

It's a debate without easy resolution, one likely to play out elsewhere in the city in the months and years ahead.

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