Little kids have found bodies, the pavement is lined with syringes and silver spoons and drug users shoot up in alleys behind Vietnamese restaurants.
Welcome to ‘Zombieland’ – what some locals have dubbed the grungy inner Melbourne suburb of North Richmond, currently in the grip of Victoria’s heroin crisis.
Overdoses are soaring, addicts are found sprawled on the ground between cars in the housing estate carpark, and it’s impossible to miss the dealers loitering by Tram Stop 20.
Fed up with death on their doorstep, locals are demanding a medically supervised injection room, like the long-standing facility in Sydney’s Kings Cross.
But the state government isn’t interested, last week ruling out a trial which many local activists are clamouring for.
‘This is insane. This is Melbourne,’ said activist Judy Ryan. ‘People are dying on the streets. We wouldn’t put up with this anywhere else’.
A woman shoots up inside a multi-storey housing estate carpark in North Richmond. A report last week said drug use in the area, east of Melbourne, had ‘reached crisis levels’
Despite the clamour of local activists, the state government will not move forward on a medically supervised injection centre, which experts said would reduce public injections
Cleaners are contracted to pick up the syringes which litter the area twice per day. One is pictured lugging around a sharps container on Wednesday
Grim sight: A cleaner strolls the alleyways of North Richmond, picking up discharged syringes, containers and spoons
Inside one of the clinical waste bins where syringes are disposed day to day
Heartbreaking toll: Sam O’Donnell, 27, died of a heroin overdose in this Richmond laneway about a year ago. A floral memorial sits at the alley entrance
It may seem like a 1990s-era drug – but heroin has recently had a resurgence in Victoria, with the number of deaths from the drug set to overtake the road toll in the next few years.
In 2015, the number of overdoses quadrupled from 13 to 59 in the Richmond area alone. In the first six months of 2017, there’s already been 37 overdoses. The community health service tweets every overdose.
Most of the drug dealing happens in plain sight on Victoria Street, the area’s main thoroughfare, and within a four-block ‘heroin rectangle’ just streets away from hipster bars and million-dollar apartments.
Ms Ryan, from the residents’ group Victoria Street Drug Solutions, and a group of locals this week told Daily Mail Australia and a recent parliamentary inquiry about their experiences in the area.
One email sent to Ms Ryan by a local mother this week said: ‘My 6 year old son and I saw a person who had injected on the street, a syringe hanging out of his leg, mumbling.’
‘My son is very upset and traumatised and has repeated memories of it.’
It’s part of a running theme. Both the major local drug dens where local users inject – a multi-storey car park and a public toilet – are a short walk from public schools.
A submission to a parliamentary inquiry this year said: ‘One woman described… a group of children running up to a person who had died of an overdose on the grounds of the estate, and touching the deceased person’s body.
The Melbourne CBD is visible from Victoria Street, North Richmond – the home of the city’s ‘heroin rectangle’
Two police officers are seen talking to a local standing on the most notorious corner of Victoria Street
The corner of Lennox and Victoria St is often mobbed by dealers and users
The ‘heroin rectangle’ is bordered by Hoddle Street, Elizabeth St, Victoria St and Lennox St (pictured)
This was the sight that greeted Daily Mail Australia when a reporter stepped out of the car on Wednesday morning. The spoons, band aids, syringes and Hedanol were cleaned up within a couple of hours
Activists drolly described this multi-storey car park as an ‘unsupervised injection centre’
In this photograph, a man, 57, injects in a laneway. He had just bought a $30 rock from dealers on nearby Victoria Street – which is at the heart of Melbourne’s ‘heroin rectangle’
Another local submission to the inquiry said: ‘I cannot step out of my front door and make a return visit to Victoria St without confronting users publicly injecting, managing overdoses, or hunting for a dealer.
‘I see dealers blatantly selling, spruiking, arguing all along Victoria St. I see the drug affected in doorways, on porches, between rubbish bins and in our gardens. I clean litter, faeces, and vomit from my pathway.
‘We have found syringes in our front and back gardens, and asked users to get off our property on multiple occasions. I have opened my carport to see a user with a blood filled syringe in his arm directly opposite.’
Meca Ho, the president of the Victoria St Traders’ Association, said he had people overdose in the concrete car park behind his Vietnamese restaurant.
‘It’s getting worse. It’s not getting better,’ he said. People sometimes come in off the streets to inject in his toilet – and lock themselves in for ‘half an hour’, he told the Daily Mail.
‘The sad part is it’s a choice they make. I kinda see mates I went to uni (with) on the streets taking drugs.’
Outside, ‘it’s like a zombieland sometimes’, and he said business was down 30 per cent.
Mr Ho is in favour of an injecting centre coming to the area – so long as it’s not on the main thoroughfare. ‘I don’t mind, we do need medical facility. But not in Victoria St…
‘And more police zero tolerance and camera (is needed) before anything can be supervised medically.’
Local resident Judy Ryan, pictured, stands in front of a toilet block frequented by drug users – where she found a woman who overdosed in May this year
A man dozes on the side of the street near the notorious corner in North Richmond
Local businessman Meca Ho said more law enforcement and CCTV cameras were needed before a supervised injecting centre was introduced
The local health service distributes upwards of 88,000 clean needles a month. A health official explained: ‘Providing clean equipment is our strongest defence against the spread of blood-borne viruses like HIV and Hepatitis C. Keeping blood borne viruses contained helps keep the whole community safe, not just people who use drugs’
Packages of sterilised injecting equipment are provided by North Richmond Community Health’s
‘No papers please’: A syringe disposal box at one of the local public housing estates i
In a report, the Yarra Drug Forum argued an injecting centre would reduce public injecting and fatal overdoses, improve local amenity and reduce the demand on local emergency services.
But last Friday, the state government ruled out a safe injecting room after a parliamentary inquiry. Forty-six submissions did not oppose the room, although it was opposed by Drug Free Australia, the Australian Christian Lobby and the Drug Advisory Council of Australia.
‘We have no plans to introduce a safe injecting room,’ Mental Health Minister Martin Foley told the Australian Associated Press.
‘This is fundamentally a public health issue that the report identifies, we know there is more to be done in alcohol and drug rehabilitation more generally.’
Mr Foley said the government was investing more in rehabilitation services.
Critics such as the Drug Advisory Council argue: ‘There are other and better options than a convention breaching, state sponsored ‘shooting gallery’’.’
A spokeswoman for North Richmond Community Health – which provides clean needles to users and whose staff often drop everything to resuscitate overdosed addicts – this week said the situation in North Richmond could change with an injecting centre.
‘We are ready and willing to launch a supervised injecting facility. All we need is the green light,’ she said.
‘We’re on the frontline. We have the expertise, we have other services to support them, and we have a long history of working with this community.
‘Human beings are dying on our streets, and there is something we could be doing about it.
‘No matter what you think about people’s choices or their circumstances, we have an obligation to help those people. ‘