There was a time when residents on Cherry Avenue lived in a idyllic neighbourhood.

When the street was lined with rows of modest dwellings — each with their own unique character — filled with families who invested in the community and area.

They were residents like Dorothy Dixon.

The North Shore homeowner has been living on Cherry since the hippy generation.

Dixon can remember when everyone on the block had families and owned their own homes.

“There was no trouble,” she said.

But four decades have changed her street and neighbourhood — and not for the better.

Dixon said she knows exactly when the area began its downward slide, pointing to the low-income apartments on each end of the street.

Since then, she’s had people steal possessions from her front door, witnessed drug use and fights in nearby yards and seen a constant parade of police cars cruising up and down the street.

“I have no time for that crap,” she told KTW.

Though the situation got better for Dixon after a fence was built in her back alley a couple of years ago, the same can’t be said for the neighbourhood.

And there’s one address in particular — The Residences at Sun Valley Ridge at 435 Cherry Ave. (formerly known as Clearview Manor) — which has drawn the ire of the locals.

The building made headlines last December after tenants came forward with complaints of not having heat or hot water for weeks.

The complex was in violation of a number of fire and building codes and city officials went so far as to hand its out-of-town owner Jason Hari $4,000 in fines.

Eventually, the building was repaired, but neighbours insist it’s done little to change the sinister problems plaguing the street.

The Hari-owned apartment building was the site of a recent axe attack and a raid by police, which led to the recovery of thousands of dollars worth of stolen property.

The situation has gotten so bad another resident on the street, who didn’t want to use his name, told KTW he lives in constant fear and sleeps with a shotgun in his bedroom

The longtime neighbour has seen with all the fights and drugs.

He’s had his car broken into three times — and one morning found a man passed out in his garden.

He said his children and grandchildren won’t visit because of the problems in the neighbourhood.

Kamloops RCMP acknowledge its members have been called to the location many times in the past couple of years for a wide range of illegal activity, from disturbances to fights and drugs.

“It’s no secret, we’ve been called there several times,” RCMP Sgt. Scott Wilson said.

But it’s not just Sun Valley Ridge that’s seen its share of some disturbing incidents.

An apartment building across the street was the scene of a violent assault and robbery in October that sent an elderly property manager to the hospital after she was choked unconscious.

Residents agree it hasn’t always been this way and put the blame squarely on the owner of Sun Valley Ridge.

Residents believe the low rent being charged is attracting an unsavory element that causes all the problems.

They want the city to step in and clean up the complex and street.

The city’s politicians have said they’re well aware of Sun Valley Ridge and the Cherry Avenue residents’ concerns and are trying to do what they can to address problems in the neighbourhood.

“It seems to be one of those cycles that neighbourhoods take,” Mayor Peter Milobar said.

He noted city bylaw officers and RCMP are keeping an eye on the street, but he contends a solution for 435 Cherry isn’t so simple.

He said the owner has property rights and suggested taking legal action is “always a tougher phase.”

As for a long-term solution for the neighbourhood, Milobar said the city has invested significant dollars into the North Shore, pointing out the new Spirit Square and improved McDonald Park, along with an apartment development a couple of doors down from Sun Valley Ridge as examples.

Hari, who lives in Surrey, defended his role in the property.

Via e-mail, he told KTW there have been a number of enhancements and changes in effect for months.

Hari suggested “large-scale investment” over the past year, along with market-value rental rates, a change of the on-site manager, resident evictions and turnover continue to “elevate the calibre of residency.

“Any recent activity is due to our collaboration with the RCMP to process outgoing tenants who are in the eviction process for one reason or another,” he said, “some of whom are already on their radar, so the rooting

out and cleaning

house of any problem tenants is an active net-positive process very much underway on a daily basis.”

But the changes to 435 Cherry couldn’t come fast enough for neighbours like Dixon, who said she has no intention of going anywhere — nor should she have to leave.