Vancouver’s Downtown East Side is a place notorious for it’s residents who live below the poverty line in a city twice voted “the worlds most livable” by the Economist Magazine.

Statistics for the suburb include an AIDS rate estimated at 30% and the leading cause of death as overdose. Addiction is the core problem causing women to sell sex in order to meet subsistence needs such as food and shelter. Living conditions are sub-standard with the norm consisting of small single room accommodations that are ridden with bed bugs and multi resistant Staphylococcus.

The media regularly makes rounds on the Downtown East side but it only serves to stigmatize the people. It is easy to forget that this is a real suburb home to real people who are suffering devastating loss of health and quality of life due to addiction.

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