The Downtown Eastside Vancouver Meltdown

I spent the whole winter in 2017 in Downtown Eastside Vancouver. Already then it was shocking, far beyond anything I’d seen in Montreal, which itself struggles with homelessness. Hastings Street in particular was perpetually littered with garbage, hopelessly occupied by drug addicts, plagued by crime, vandalised and ghettoised, while homeless people entrenched themselves ever deeper to avoid evictions from tent cities. And don’t get me started about the police presence.

Five years later, one might look back at those days with nostalgia, a period when at least the neighbourhood hadn’t yet been outright abandoned by the government. It even came to the point Canada Post would no longer deliver mail there. The level of violence is so graphic it reminds me of Detroit at its nadir. The police would rather not patrol the area at all. The residents claim to be under siege. The city has given up on street sweeps every morning. And while the fire chief may have ordered the latest tent city on Hastings Street dismantled, it is questionable whether the order can be enforced, because the crowd just keeps swelling, is growing ever more aggressive, and has nowhere to go.

Worse still, it feels like this is where desperate people go to die. Because at this point only the desperate would stay there.

Here’s a non-exhaustive review of the incidents that made it to the news in the last few months:

Sword attack in Vancouver’s DTES sends man to hospital: No kidding. How often do you get stabbed by a sword while on the street?

Two people “slashed with machete” in series of unprovoked weekend attacks in Vancouver: No, that’s not the same incident as above; it’s another sword attack incident one week later.

Stranger lights woman on fire in Vancouver’s DTES: Another graphic incident that elicits questions pertaining to the perpetrator’s mental health.

Vancouver police shoot suspect after alleged assault on officer in Downtown Eastside: Random assaults against police officers in broad daylight aren’t common. Even the police doesn’t feel safe in the area anymore.

Missing woman found dead in the Downtown Eastside: And she wasn’t even homeless, which reeks of human trafficking.

Independent agency investigates Vancouver police in second shooting death in nine days: That’s just how bad criminality and firearm proliferation has gotten.

Downtown Eastside fire displaces residents, kills two dogs: No wonder the fire chief is fretting about the situation there.

Vancouver Street Church destroyed in fire on Downtown Eastside, no major injuries: So many fires lately that it feels like the problem is somehow taking care of itself; the whole neighbourhood will burn to cinders.

Why is Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside so dangerous for pedestrians? It’s not limited to arson, gunfights, and swords attacks: one has to worry about being hit by cars as well.

Vancouver police investigate city’s ninth homicide of the year after Downtown Eastside stabbing: No, it’s not the same as either of the other two stabbings mentioned above, but I had to look up the details to be sure.

Allow me to stop here. You get the idea.

Yet there has been scant genuine discussion on how to solve the problem, because people don’t want to acknowledge the obvious: the chaos in Downtown Eastside Vancouver is not the problem, but an acute symptom of underlying issues. The most significant, of course, is the gutting of the social safety net, combined with many years of neglect pertaining to dirty issues such as drug use and mental health. This is what happens when society treats the poor and needy like vermin and pretends problems don’t exist.