Vancouver's Downtown Eastside offers lessons for others: report

Canwest News Service
Thursday, February 21, 2008

VANCOUVER -- With its grimy streets and often abject displays of poverty, misery and drug abuse, Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is a magnet for negative coverage.

But a new report from a Calgary-based think-tank takes an unusually rosy view of the area.

In Lessons from Hastings and Main, the third report in the Canada West Foundation's core challenges initiative, writer Lisa Allford looks at what other Western cities can learn from some of the many programs providing support on the ground in the Downtown Eastside.

What Allford discovered while examining programs as complex as a drug trial offering free heroin and as simple as a non-profit bottle depot, is that good street level programs have at least one thing in common.

"What I learned talking to the few people I did - and they were just a microcosm of the hundreds and hundreds of people working in that neighbourhood - is that what they had is a real respect for the people they work with," she said Wednesday.

"In terms of what makes a worthy program, that's step one."

One such initiative Allford profiled is Sheway, an outreach program for new moms and moms to be in the neighbourhood.

Another program is the United We Can bottle and can depot on Hastings Street. United We Can, started with a small government loan, provides a way for the homeless and drug addicted to earn some legitimate money by bringing in recyclables they can trade for cash.

In the introduction to her report, Allford references "a perfect storm of failed policies" that have contributed to the misery in the Downtown Eastside, Canada's most notorious neighbourhood. And many of those who speak in the report are concerned not just with what programs get funded, but also how.

Link to article
Link to Letters from Hastings and Main: Signs of Hope in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside report