Joan Morelli

Life in the Downtown Eastside

Life in the Downtown Eastside is very often tinged with violence from strangers, service providers, and the police. We suffer particularly from the cruelty of poverty. Living in poverty erodes one’s feeling of adequacy and diffuses one’s confidence and sense of self-worth. It is a struggle to maintain one’s dignity when one has to tolerate sneers and jeers from the public. The stereotype of poverty is an addicted person who lives in the Downtown Eastside. But the faces of poverty are diverse and can be found all over BC, which has the highest child poverty rate, the highest cost of housing, and the lowest minimum wage. (…)