Downtown Eastside Women's Centre
Brief to the NDP Task Force on Older Women in British Columbia
Publisher: Katherine Roback, Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, Vancouver, Canada
Year Published: 1980
Pages: 3pp Resource Type: Article
Cx Number: CX2230
This brief describing the Downtown Eastside Women's Center points to the fact that women who live in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver face a harsh life in this predominantly male environment.
Abstract:
This brief describing the Downtown Eastside Women's Center points to the fact that women who live in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver face a harsh life in this predominantly male environment. They fact both poverty and isolation in hotels or rooming houses as well as harassment by men. Landlords often call women trouble-makers, because when they are present in hotels there is trouble caused usually by the men.
The Downtown Eastside Women's Center was started as a "home-like" drop-in in 1975 to provide a place for support and sanctuary for the women of this area. Since then, it has developed into an informal "multi-service" center with membership of over 250 women. It has three staff, one for each of the major ethnic groups that use the center - Chinese, Native Indian and Caucasian. This staff has become involved in a wide variety of activities to support the women who visit, often through intensive one-to-one sessions that develop informally or with regard to a crisis.
The struggle for survival for these women is complicated by harassment, abuse, poor physical and mental health and bleak living conditions. These often require individual advocacy work or referral to other supportive agencies. However, in order for these to be successful, there must be sufficient trust between the women and the staff.
It is the Native and white women over 40 years old who are most frequently hit by extreme housing difficulties. To get beyond the "band-aid" approach for those women that are particularly "hard to house", the staff of the center have been working with others in the Downtown Eastside through the Urban Society for Women's Residences to establish a women's residence that will have 30 suites. This is seen as a small but useful start to add to the other aspects of the work of the center.
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