Proponents say rising wages are keeping sex workers in more dangerous street jobs.
Sex workers on the Downtown East Side have been haunted by violent incidents that have shook their neighborhoods in recent weeks, including the discovery of a missing woman's remains and gratuitous assaults. is on alert.
While the system of reporting violent offenders is intended to prevent street sex workers from being targeted, advocates say rising indoor rents put them in a more dangerous situation. It is said that it continues to drive into.
"People put their lives on the line every time they go out for work," says the WISH drop-in center, an organization that helps neighborhood sex workers. says Mebrat Beyene.
Some sex workers living in the tent city of East Hastings Street this week will demolish their makeshift homes for which there are noaffordable housing options. was forced to
WISH operates her 23-bed emergency shelter so that workers who identify as women must trade risky or low-cost sex for accommodation. there is It has reached capacity since it opened in the fall of 2020.
The nonprofit released a "bad date" report on August 4, detailing multiple assault allegations from employees, vague descriptions of accused clients, vehicle charges, where the person was driving and where the incident is said to have occurred.
"Often, we redact much of what sex workers share because it is information that could threaten their safety. She fears clients will retaliate." 'he said Beyene.
Anything not mentioned in the memo has been disseminated by email throughout the Lower Mainland . Kidnapping, forced confinement, rape.
``Many workers are too traumatized to even report this incident to us, let alone the police. We will prepare a sufficiently detailed report so that it can be pursued without a report.”
Vancouver Police say there is no evidence to file criminal charges after the report is made, said the sergeant. Steve Addison.
“Sometimes evidence is readily available, sometimes not.
Street-based sex workers are most often known to spread warnings about their clients to others in the workplace.
A sex worker told her Postmedia that when the hotel in her single room implemented guest restrictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she was paying $375 a month in rent. He said he had to stand on the streets of Hastings and Cordoba to earn enough money to pay.
Potential customers drive until she is 31 years old.
``In less than two minutes, I'll tell you: 'Is this guy a piece of shit or does he look okay?''' Decide.
However, refusal to price one man also hurt workers who filed WISH an inappropriate date report after a man physically assaulted her in 2020. It turned out to be dangerous as well.
"I still have kidney damage from him hitting me," she said.
Working outside is not only more dangerous, but also less income, according to sex workers.
"If you don't have a place indoors, you can only make up to $100 from your service. If you can get customers inside, you can make up to $500."
Downtown Eastside Beyene said the dangers faced by women and sex workers in precarious housing in the United States are nothing new.
Police data show this year's violent crime rate in the region, whereserial killer Robert Picktonhad kidnapped some of his victims since 1991. is more than double that of the rest of Vancouver.
On the morning of July 25, on her Avenue in Dunlevy near Powell Street, a woman sitting on the sidewalk was doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire by a stranger after she was shot dead. suffered severe burns. Police said the suspected attacker, a white man in his 30s, was targeting "vulnerable members" of the community.
Five days later, the body of his 25-year-old Kwem Manuel-Gottfriedson was found in a boarding house near East Hastings Street and Hawks Avenue. She had been reported missing three days earlier.
The bodies of two of her other women, 14-year-old Noelle O-Soup and an unidentified woman in her 30s, were found a block away from her in May. rice field.
The woman's cause of death remains under investigation by BC. Coroner's services and community sex workers remain tense, Beyene said. It's always there—it's just the public forgetting."
sgrochowski@postmedia.com
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