![]() ![]() “Nobody has a right to move those people simply to accommodate a better visual image for the Olympics,” said provincial legislative housing critic Shane Simpson. That would violate bid assurances, they say. But progress may be halted by the increasing violence of Vancouver’s drug trade, as cocaine prices skyrocket in the aftermath of a Mexican crackdown on drug cartels.Ĭritics allege the Downtown Eastside will be sanitized during the Games under recently passed legislation that allows police to force the homeless into shelters in cold weather. ![]() Montaner said the combination of drug and health programs as well as housing initiatives are beginning to slow the crisis. The HIV rate qualifies the Downtown Eastside for World Health Organization epidemic status, he said. The women, the men and the transgendered are living prey.”ĭue in part to rampant intravenous drug use, the area’s HIV rate is the worst in the developed world, said International AIDS Society president Dr. “We know it’s hunting grounds down there, and we’re doing nothing about it. ![]() “There is this perception that all the violence ended when Pickton was arrested,” Hamilton said. Prostitution rights activist Jamie Lee Hamilton said little has been done to curb violence against prostitutes since Pickton’s arrest. ![]() Her brother, Jason Fleury, called the Downtown Eastside a time bomb and accused officials of doing nothing to defuse it while spending millions on the Olympics. Mona Wilson’s head, hands and feet were found in a bucket at Pickton’s farm. He was convicted of killing and butchering six of them at his suburban farm. The area gained international attention when pig farmer Robert Pickton was arrested in 2002 and charged with the deaths of 26 prostitutes and addicts from the Downtown Eastside, in what police say is Canada’s worst serial murder case. Welfare Wednesday is known as Mardi Gras in the area, a day the recipients become what they call “two-day millionaires.” Needle exchange staff work on the welfare lines. While about US$500 million has been spent on the road, the Downtown Eastside remains much the same.Īs they did in 2003, welfare recipients still line up once a month to receive their welfare checks. The bid evaluation team did see the scenic but treacherous highway from Vancouver to Whistler, host of alpine and sliding events. When it came time to tour Vancouver venues, the IOC’s bus took a wide detour around the neighborhood. The International Olympic Committee’s bid evaluation team did not see the Downtown Eastside when it assessed Vancouver’s bid in 2003. “It’s a tremendous challenge that goes beyond the traditional scope of policing,” Houghton said. About 49 percent of Downtown Eastside calls are related to mental health, according to the Vancouver Police Department. Lindsey Houghton said officers often find themselves in the role of social workers while continuing to target the drug trade. On the building’s front steps is Vancouver’s largest open-air drug market, at the intersection of Main and Hastings streets, called “Pain and Wastings” by locals.Īcross the street is Vancouver’s biggest police station. Behind it, dealers and pimps hawk drugs and women in a filthy alley. It also is the only place in North America where drug addicts can shoot heroin into their veins at an officially sanctioned injection site.Īt the center of the neighborhood is a neoclassical building endowed by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1903. This neighborhood is the most concentrated drug and poverty ghetto in North America, with high use of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, according to criminologist Benedikt Fischer of Simon Fraser University. “You want to get out of here.”Īs Vancouver prepares for the Olympics and the descent of the world’s media, the Downtown Eastside remains a huge problem - 15 square blocks of despair, squalid rooming houses and alleys populated by thousands of addicts, the homeless, the mentally ill and the drug dealers who prey on them. “It’s a jungle,” said Glen, a 49-year-old heroin addict who goes by the street name Trouble. ![]()
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