Vicki Howard bears the scars of life in a street overrun by heroin addicts.
A needle-thin scar that follows the line of her jaw was given to her by an addict who was shooting up in the gravel laneway that runs behind her house.
![Vicki Howard (pictured with her daughter Gail Mann) was attacked by an addict.](/web/20170424192251im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/p/o/i/e/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvpofy.png/1493013117343.jpg)
"We told him to move on, but he started arguing the point, and I started arguing back, of course. Next minute he attacked my daughter, he grabbed a pole and came back and started hitting both of us."
Little Charles Street, Abbotsford, where Ms Howard lives, is ground zero for the heroin crisis that has exploded in Melbourne in the past two years.
![Needles and paraphernalia left in the laneways.](/web/20170424192251im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/p/o/i/6/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvpofy.png/1493013117343.jpg)
Many residents have had to perform CPR on unconscious people. Others sit on their porches and listen for the sound of a person in trouble, which means they need to dial triple zero again.
"Every neighbour has a story of waiting with an overdose victim until help arrives," wrote one local in a submission to a state parliamentary committee in March. "Locals should not have to take on responsibility for life and death in this way."
The streets and laneways around here have no taps. Not one. Some have had the brass tops removed; others are completely severed at the pipe.
Everyone had to remove them, says Ms Howard, because addicts kept coming into their backyards to get water used in injecting heroin.
![<br>](/web/20170424192251im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/p/o/i/3/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvpofy.png/1493013117343.jpg)
Photo: Justin McManus
In the morning and about 6pm, the laneway is the scene for drug use, public urination, and sex. Cigarette butts, syringes and empty cans of alcohol crunch underfoot.
Vicki's daughter Gail Howard has been documenting the problem with a camera. "People just don't believe us otherwise," she says, shaking her head.
![Residents take the handles off their taps so addicts can't use them to get water for mixing drugs.](/web/20170424192251im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/p/o/h/e/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gvpofy.png/1493013117343.jpg)
Most of the dealing happens in broad daylight at nearby North Richmond station, where train, tram and bus lines intersect, right in the middle of Melbourne's deadly "heroin rectangle".
Clean needles are collected from North Richmond Community Health's needle exchange, which is now giving out a staggering 75,000 syringes a month.
And then the addicts come to the small, gravel-filled laneway between Charles and Little Charles streets to mix and shoot up.
Experts say the heroin problem, which was always present, has exploded into a full-blown crisis in North Richmond in the past two years.
There were 190 fatal heroin deaths in Victoria in 2016, an increase of more than 70 per cent since 2011, coronial figures show. More than 20 per cent of them are either dying in, or sourcing the drug from, Richmond.
What is behind the spike?
"It's the increased availability of heroin, essentially," says Demos Krouskos, North Richmond Community Health's CEO.
"You can come here any day and witness people injecting in front of you. It's open-slather."
A group of community and medical groups, including council, paramedics, local residents and traders, are pushing for a supervised injecting room in North Richmond, where addicts could safely shoot up – and overdoses could be immediately treated. The 117 submissions to a parliamentary inquiry overwhelmingly support a trial.
North Richmond Community Health has volunteered to set up the service. Mr Krouskos says heroin use is already rampant in Richmond; a centre would at least make it safer.
The Coroner is expected to recommend a trial. But the Liberals and Labor have both already said they firmly oppose the idea.
That leaves locals wondering just what sort of tragedy will get politicians to act.
Ms Howard has lived in Little Charles Street for 23 years. Is this as bad as it has ever been?
"Worse".