In my first post about Vancouver I
described a typical Vancouverite as “friendly, outdoorsy and environmentally
aware”. I mentioned how people wear active wear around town and support local
farms. They drink smoothies, go to the gym and walk their dogs. I painted a
picture of a city inhabited by a healthy and wealthy type of middle class
westerner.
Arguably this is true for the majority of Downtown
Vancouver and for Kitsilano (the area around the UBC campus). However, if you travel
15 minutes East of central Downtown the situation changes dramatically. You get
off the bus and instantly the atmosphere of the area feels totally different.
It feels gloomy, forlorn, and desperate. The people you bump into seem vacant and somewhat
shabby with hollow faces and sad expressions. People sit huddled in blankets
all along the sidewalks and needles visibly litter the ground.
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A man
rests on the sidewalk near Hastings and Gore streets
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The Downtown Eastside (DTES) is one of the
city's oldest areas. It is notorious for its poverty, homelessness, drug trade
and crime. These issues are not unique
to Vancouver, they can be found in almost all cities across the world. However,
what is notable is their concentration in this one area and the sharp contrast
between this and the areas immediately adjacent to it. There almost seems to be a binary split between middle class vancouverites and homeless vancouverites, with very little in between. Whereas in cities like London I feel like the whole range of incomes is present and somewhat more intermingled (although zoning is still prevalent). I think it is also
important to highlight how few non-Canadians are aware of this situation. It
has somewhat slipped under the radar… when you think of Vancouver, homeless drug addicts are not the first thing to spring to mind.
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| People on the sidewalk of East Hastings street in East Van |
Homelessness was not an issue in Vancouver
until after the 1980s. In 1999 the homeless count was under 600 people. By 2008
it had grown to 2,592 people (Berti, 2010). In less than ten years a serious
situation emerged and snowballed into a crisis. The population of the DTES is estimated at around 6,000. Therefore,
just under half of the people in this district currently have nowhere to live. The two main causes are lack of income and the increasing cost of
housing. Plus there is a seasonal influx of homeless people in the winter
because Vancouver has a much milder climate than most of the Canada due to its
proximity to the coast (although this is nothing new).
Furthermore, in November 2016, drug
overdose deaths hit a record high in BC with an average of 4 people dying from
them everyday – almost all from Vancouver’s DTES (CBC News, 2016).
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| Protest signs above tents in East Vancouver |
There is also a notable ethnic poverty
divide in the city. Aboriginal people make up about 30% of Vancouver’s homeless
population while only comprising 2% of the total population of Greater
Vancouver (Berti, 2010). This suggests that British Columbia’s indigenous
population have disproportionately suffered. They seem to have struggled to
integrate into the Western system and modern Vancouver set-up.
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| Homeless aboriginal lady protesting the high cost of housing in Vancouver |
The first time I set foot in the DTES I
remember feeling unsafe, on edge and shocked. I couldn’t believe this was the
same Vancouver as I had been in before and I also couldn’t believe that I had had
no idea this even existed. However, a lot of different activities and events
have taken me to East Van and I realized the other day how accustomed to it I
have become. I almost no longer notice it. It’s just the way it is and when you
come in contact with something regularly enough you start to zone it out. This accustomization process can be dangerous because you start to accept the ways things are rather than striving to change them.
References
Berti, M, 2010.
Handcuffed access: homelessness and the justice system. Urban Geography,
31 (6), 825-841
CBC News. 2016. Drug
overdose deaths in B.C. reach all-time high in November. [ONLINE] Available
at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/drug-overdose-bc-november-1.3903256.
[Accessed 8 March 2017].