I noticed the Globe has several articles, videos, and photos on a dedicated Downtown Eastside page: "Canada's Slum: The Fix":
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/thefix/
I couldn't find a general thread on the DTES, so I thought I'd post here. Here's one article discussing how much money is poured into Canada's most notorious neighborhood:
Quote:
The money pit
A Globe and Mail investigation shows for the first time how much public and private money has been spent on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside since 2000: $1.4-billion. What has all that money accomplished? Limited progress at best. As Robert Matas reports, many people believe the area is worse than ever
ROBERT MATAS
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
February 13, 2009 at 11:59 PM EST
VANCOUVER — It has been nearly a decade since three levels of government signed a landmark agreement designed to transform Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside, but the neighbourhood remains a vortex that sucks in junkies, the mentally ill and other desperate souls from across the country.
With a year remaining in the agreement — and the 2010 Olympics about to put Vancouver in the world's spotlight — a Globe and Mail investigation has for the first time tallied how much public and private money has been poured into Canada's worst slum.
The result: More than $1.4-billion later, the Downtown Eastside is hardly better off.
An open-air drug market still thrives five minutes from a police station. The bathrooms of decrepit hotels still serve as shooting galleries for addicts. Prostitutes still offer their bodies from the curbside. Drug pushers still prey on the mentally diminished, multiplying the misery.
If there has been progress, it has been scant. The rash of drug overdoses that killed more than 1,000 people in the 1990s has dissipated, but the legion of addicts remains. HIV/AIDS is no longer epidemic, but residents' health remains abysmal.
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Source: Robert Matas,
Globe and Mail
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