Downtown Eastside Vancouver Case Study

Downtown Eastside Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada is a low income area, infamous for its drug use, prostitution and crime (Bingham et al., 2014). An estimated 70% of sex workers in the Downtown Eastside Vancouver sex trade are Aboriginal women who are “in their early 20’s and also mothers” (Bingham et al., 2014, para. 4). Aboriginal women are over represented in street sex trade due to colonial ramifications (Hunt, 2013). This statistic goes to demonstrate the demographics of the sex trade in Downtown Eastside Vancouver; the sex workers are young and need to provide for their family, thus continuing in the sex trade is their only opportunity to generate economic stability. Such trade and profession however comes with the price of working in a high risk environment, where they are vulnerable to predators, looking to harm them. Prostitution is legal in Canada; however the Criminal Code of Canada legalized legislations that made prostitution unsafe, leaving sex workers vulnerable to violence (Young, 2008). A sex worker could not solicit or communicate with a client in a public space under section 213(1)(c) of the Criminal Code, thus

The tolerance zone, indirectly legalized the sex trade in order to deter public nuisance from impacting businesses and residential areas. There is a multiple reality of place, in which Downtown Eastside Vancouver can mean different things to different people (Thompson, 2014). The creation of the tolerance zone forcibly moved sex workers to an environment with high crime and violence, and although there was a probability of risks in their occupation, the sex workers had no other options. Downtown Eastside Vancouver externally represents a community savaged of high crime, violence, commercial sex and drug use to the public. However, the sex workers view the location as a way to make money and survive, viewing the area differently from those