IF you want a flat in St Teresa's Gardens you have to join a queue. The blocks reek of poverty and deprivation, some 10 per cent of the population is believed to be on hard drugs, yet the waiting list for housing transfers continues to grow.
The flats, according to those who live in them and those who aspire to residency, are being "cleaned up". Concerned parents patrol the area. Drug pushers are no longer visible in the early evening.
A man in his 20s, waiting to meet the residents' committee, thinks the neighbourhood is heaven compared to the one he wants to leave. His home in Hardwick Street has been broken into four times in recent months. "The junkies shoot up on my bed. I'm living between pushers, and I can't handle it anymore," he says.
Over the last two years the use of heroin in the inner city has soared, according to locals. "Every second kid is taking gear. Couriers dump the drug in Dolphin's Barn every day. The prices jump alarmingly from £2 to £20 a go," says one local.
"There are 14 year olds chasing the dragon; kids who should be at school are trying to make £80 a day to feed their habit. It's crazy," he says.
Young local men refuse to discuss the latest wave of vigilante attacks.
The residents' committee say they will not discuss the latest wave of vigilante attacks on drug pushers - when they are ready they will call the newspapers and provide video evidence of the pushers activities in their area. They are fed up with the bad press since the killing of Josey Dwyer.
In Basin Street flats the silence is equally deliberate. "It's fear," is how a community activist, Mr James Boylan, explains the silence. "People are afraid of the pushers and what they are doing to their children but they, are also afraid of the vigilantes.
He believes that the vigilante attacks are not IRA led, "but a community reaction to fear. There is total frustration and anger in the communities. The system has broken down. Heroin abuse is at a high, as bad as it was in the 1980s.
"Violence is one reaction to fear. There's a feeling that you should get the pushers before they get you. But it's not television. If you beat someone with a baseball bat they don't bounce back up."
A lot of good work is being done by community groups in the area, he says, but the statutory organisations are guilty of neglect. "The authorities must put in place proper structures to deal with the problems. It must be done with the co operation of residents, and it must be done urgently."