Downtown Eastside is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Vancouver that has a variety of positive attributes, including community spirit, to be specific. Furthermore, like any other neighborhood, the community has issues they desire to improve (Vancouver Police Department, 2007). Downtown Eastside (DTES) has various issues that have been challenging to resolve despite the intervention of numerous agencies, individuals, and governments. However, some areas of DTES have successfully implemented various initiatives to enhance the residents’ quality of life; the success has been a nightmare in other areas. Several attempts have been undertaken previously by different government levels and non-profit agencies to alleviate the conditions in the DTES. These initiatives have proved beneficial in various areas, such as the latest projects in Chinatown and Gastown. The achievement has been achieved in various areas, such as preserving these neighborhoods’ legacy. There is a yearning for progress and change at the public and government/agency levels. Many efforts are now ongoing to assist in restoring the DTES, and there is a surge of attention in addressing the difficulties in the area (Vancouver Police Department, 2007).
Continuing to create and promote an atmosphere that promotes inter-agency cooperation will guarantee that current policies and initiatives have the best chance of making a difference in society’s interconnected concerns. However, there are numerous challenges to face throughout the rehabilitation process. While the partnership is essential for effectiveness, it is also a requirement to advance existing and prospective efforts to solve the DTES’s most disadvantaged residents’ concerns by providing them with the skills and resources they need to improve their lives (Vancouver Police Department, 2007).
Background of the Topic
DTES is a historic neighborhood with over 16,000 citizens. It was formerly a flourishing commercial sector in the center of the city. Consequently, a significant community health and public stability issue has engulfed the lives of a large percentage of residents in the DTES. The negative consequences of a high prevalence of psychological illness, substance abuse, illness, crime, unemployment, and poverty have wreaked havoc on society’s most susceptible members. These difficulties have a significant detrimental influence on all inhabitants and businesses in the region and substantially undermine the lives of disadvantaged people. This ongoing situation, which is well-known across Canada and the globe, necessitates a quick response (Vancouver Police Department, 2007).
Many folks battling to make ends meet in the DTES have mental illnesses, drug and alcohol addictions, etc. These people frequently struggle to find and keep jobs, and as a result, the majority of them live in poverty. These persons frequently engage in criminal behavior, hidden economies, or the sex industry to survive and support their obsessions. Inexpensive accommodation is frequently located in filthy rooms, run by shady landlords, frequented by criminals, or merely inaccessible, leaving an increasing number of people homeless. The DTES has been declared a state of emergency by health experts (Vancouver Police Department, 2007).
The DTES is in catastrophe, and a mandatory, organized strategy is essential to bring about change and enhance people’s lives. Using a customer technique to reduce the number of persons who experience severe obstacles in their life would create an atmosphere in which other DTES programs will have the highest likelihood of succeeding. The formation of a steering group of top executives, including members from local governments and the federal and provincial administrations, is recommended in this discussion paper. The organizing committee should appoint a director to assemble a team of senior professionals from diverse service organizations to meet the DTES’s most vulnerable residents (Vancouver Police Department, 2007).
Challenges in DTES
Drug Addiction
A massive outdoor drug market in the DTES has been well acknowledged. The accessibility of drugs in the DTES, combined with the “exploitative” attitude of drug traffickers, has resulted in a high rate of psychological illness and drug dependency in the neighborhood (Kumagai & McGuire, 2012). As a result, almost half of all police encounters in the DTES include people who are psychologically ill, drug addicts, or both. Though the DTES has long been linked with drunkenness, the use of heroin increased in the 1970s, and the misuse of Talwin and Ritalin increased in the 1980s.
The growth in injectable drug usage in the 1980s, followed by the arrival of inexpensive and widespread shatter coke in the 1990s, had an especially severe impact on the DTES (Kumagai & McGuire, 2012). Crack cocaine has emerged as the preferred narcotic in the region, outnumbering heroin and other types of cocaine. There was a call for a transformation in the approach to substance abuse in the 1990s. It was thought that the healthcare system, rather than the justice system, was better equipped to address and prevent fatalities caused by heroin dependency. Furthermore, by 1992, there had been a substantial decrease in the number of drug offenses tried in federal tribunals and a decrease in the median sentencing duration for those found guilty (Boyd & MacPherson, 2018). During that period, as the health care system established itself to address more precisely the drug issue, drug dependency was frequently addressed by compliance with police intervention (Kumagai & McGuire, 2012).
Crime
Unfortunately, the DTES is well-known for its extreme crime rates, which have made it a global sensation. In the 1960s, the DTES was home to 34% of all killings and violent attacks, 10% of all assaults, 33% of all burglaries, and 66% of convictions. This image has not improved much, with the DTES accounting for most of Vancouver’s criminality (Kumagai & McGuire, 2012). The DTES, particularly, has a widespread issue with violent crimes. The DTES was responsible for 34.5 percent of recorded violent assaults and 22.6 percent burglaries.
This is especially alarming because most individuals are unwell or old, putting them at greater risk. By the 1990s, the percentage of “chronic” offenders was rising. According to a recent assessment by the Vancouver Police Department, Vancouver has a significant challenge with chronic perpetrators, notably in the DTES, which seems to be unusual among big cities worldwide. Though property theft has fallen in all regions of Vancouver during the 1990s, the DTES has had a smaller decrease in the break and enters (B&Es) than the remaining portion of the city. The number of habitual perpetrators in this region could illustrate why there hasn’t been a decline in Break and Enters in the DTES. This significant crime rate discourages entrepreneurs from establishing themselves in the region and motivates existing enterprises to relocate (Newnham, 2005).
Sex Trade
Since the 1800s, the DTES has been the principal hub for prostitutes and the sex industry. The sex business in the DTES increased in scale in the 1980s, when sex traffic operators from Mount Pleasant migrated to the neighborhood in response to authorities and local criticism, prompting a special police force team (Knight et al., 2017). In addition, sex trade employees were compelled to leave Vancouver’s West End due to an intervention. The DTES became the principal place for the survivor prostitution industry in Vancouver due to these factors coming combined.
According to the latest projections, there are approximately 1,00057 and 1,50058 commercial sex employees in Vancouver, with the majority of them working in the DTES (Linden et al., 2013). Numerous people operate on the streets, yet it’s challenging to tell how many they are. These employees are mostly women, and 75 and 80 percent of them use drugs daily. To sustain a drug dependency, up to 50% of employees engage in commercial sex. The excessive rate of substance use among commercial sex operators is a crucial contributor to the DTES’s severe HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C prevalence rates (Linden et al., 2013).
Suggestions
Vancouver developed a new legislative strategy to combat illegal drug consumption in 2001. As it’s termed, the Four Pillars strategy provides a more comprehensive strategy for drug dependence, incorporating prevention, rehabilitation, regulation, and harm mitigation to combat drug use in society (Linden et al., 2013). The strategy was intended to emphasize the importance of each of these domains in tackling drug abuse. This strategy emphasizes forming collaborations between organizations to handle different aspects of each core element and between all four pillars. In a 2005 assessment, the City of Vancouver encouraged the development of collaborations to avoid drug abuse (Kumagai & McGuire, 2012). Many measures relating to all of the four components have been implemented. Drug Tribunal, Downtown Neighborhood Court, Insight and perspective, Onsite, and the proliferation of rehabilitation facilities and treatment choices are just some of the projects that have been launched. Additionally, to combat sex trafficking in the region, the authorities should establish specialized institutions whose role will be to respond to any case of sexual trade in DTES. Government agencies should collaborate with other agencies to reduce crime rates in the region and provide job opportunities for the people to mitigate poverty (Vancouver Police Department, 2007).
Conclusion
Psychological problems, illegitimate drug abuse, medical complications such as HIV and Hepatitis C illnesses, crime, and the flourishing sex trade all affect the lives of the most disadvantaged individuals in Downtown Eastside. Notwithstanding earlier initiatives to combine efforts to take measures on these severe concerns, the standard of living for the underprivileged in this region remains poor. Furthermore, to enhance the lives of individuals in the DTES who are most in need, urgent action is essential. At the same time, to guarantee substantive transformation, an intervention must be established that includes key government policymakers who can operate with ground-level groups to formulate and execute techniques that can substantially enhance the quality of life for the most disadvantaged individuals in the DTES; these people must have final decision authority for their institution.
References
Boyd, S., & MacPherson, D. (2018). Community Engagement-The Harms of Drug Prohibition: Ongoing Resistance in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. BC Studies: The British Columbian Quarterly, (200), 87-96. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/article/download/191462/188602
Knight, R., Fast, D., DeBeck, K., Shoveller, J., & Small, W. (2017). “Getting out of downtown”: a longitudinal study of how street-entrenched youth attempt to exit an inner-city drug scene. BMC public health, 17(1), 1-11. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12889-017-4313-9
Kumagai, J., & McGuire, J. (2012). Vancouver’s downtown eastside: a community in need of balance. Strathcona Business Improvement Association. https://www.vancouverbiennale.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/DTES-A-Community-in-Need-of-Balance.pdf
Linden, I. A., Mar, M. Y., Werker, G. R., Jang, K., & Krausz, M. (2013). Research on a vulnerable neighborhood-the in Vancouver’s downtown eastside from 2001 to 2011. Journal of urban health: bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 90(3), 559–573. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-012-9771-x
Newnham, J. (2005). An overview of Vancouver’s downtown eastside for UBC learning exchange trek program participants. UBC Learning Exchange. https://www.learningexchange.ubc.ca/files/2010/11/overviewdtes2016.pdf
Vancouver Police Department (2007). A United Effort to Save Lives in The Downtown Eastside. https://vpd.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/vpd-project-lockstep.pdf
