The History of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

8 min read

As one of the oldest neighbourhoods in the city, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) community holds a rich history.

Between its character homes and diverse populations, there is much to admire and appreciate about this longstanding community. At the same time, people in the DTES face the interconnected and compounding challenges of high instances of substance dependence, housing insecurity, and financial hardship.

Today, the neighbourhood is shaped by five distinct communities: Chinatown, Gastown, Victory Square, Strathcona, and Oppenheimer. But the DTES has seen lots of change over the years. The neighbourhood is most often identified by its complex hurdles of poverty, homelessness, and addiction, but what’s often missed is an understanding of how the neighbourhood reached its current state.

We’ve prepared this resource to help people build empathy and understanding towards how the DTES came to be.

Vancouver Downtown Eastside History Timeline

Photo Source: City of Vancouver Archives

Before the arrival of settlers, the Downtown Eastside land was home to the Coast Salish peoples, whose art and cultural traditions were centred on a respect for the land that sustained them, and a commitment to non-destructive stewardship of natural resources.

The Stó:lō, one of the Coast Salish Nations, originally called the land S’ólh Téméxw, meaning “our land, our world.”

The Indigenous place names of current DTES landmarks hint to their original heritage before colonial settlement.

Lek’ Leki (“Beautiful Grove” — Carrall Street)
Kiwah’esks (“Separated Points” — Main Street)
K’emk’emelay (“Grove of Big Maples” — CRAB Park)
Skwachays (“Deep Hole in the Bottom” — East False Creek)

Indigenous peoples were the sole caretakers of the land until the 1870s, when the influx of European settlers interfered with their way of life. Many decades of oppression and profound injustices followed.

Today, Indigenous peoples remain a significant presence in the Downtown Eastside, making up 31% of the population — the highest in Vancouver.

Photo Source: City of Vancouver Archives

In the late 1800s, the Downtown Eastside became Vancouver’s city centre and was home to many of Vancouver’s first historical landmarks. To name a few, the Woodward’s building housed the city’s first department store while the Carnegie Community Centre held the first library. These buildings are both standing today.

Vancouver’s economy at the time was based heavily around natural resources like mining, logging, and fishing. The area was also a major hub for transportation in and out of Vancouver, especially for resource industry workers who frequently left the city and returned with lots of money.

To provide hospitality to the high number of workers, many hotels were built along with bars for entertainment. Gastown held many of these bars and served as a major entertainment hub.

In the 1890s, the increasing population of Japanese immigrants settled into what was known as Japantown and is also known as the Oppenheimer neighbourhood today. The major influx of Japanese workers proved to be helpful in filling the local industries’ labour needs.

At the turn of the century, Chinatown started its ascent into becoming Canada's largest Chinese neighbourhood, despite having to deal with Chinese Head Tax restrictions and the Chinese Immigration Act (1923). These were both significant barriers for Chinese community members who wanted to settle in Canada.

The Chinese Head Tax was brought in to limit Chinese immigration after their efforts weren’t needed anymore in building the Canadian Pacific Railway, while the Chinese Immigration Act completely banned Chinese immigrants from entering Canada until 1947 (with some rare exceptions). Both policies were discriminatory and racist.

The early 1900s also marked the settlement of the area’s first Black community in the Strathcona neighbourhood, Hogan’s Alley.

Photo Source: City of Vancouver Archives

In the 1930s came the Great Depression, the global economic downturn that saw spikes in unemployment and poverty across the world. During this time, many people came to Vancouver in hopes of finding jobs — but didn’t know about the significant drop in available work.

Most people returned home once they found out there wasn’t any work, but the ones who stayed faced a tough situation. The lack of work available resulted in numerous rallies, strikes, and demonstrations in the neighbourhood.

With the Depression ongoing, the DTES started to see significant change. City Hall moved out of the DTES to its current Broadway location. This move, along with the movement to shift Vancouver’s downtown to the west, resulted in less foot traffic, forcing many neighbourhood businesses to close their doors or move, ultimately impacting the economic opportunities in the DTES.

World War II also created waves in the community. Japanese community members were forced out of the DTES as a result of the federal war policies issued against Japanese people. These measures were lifted in 1948, but Japantown (Oppenheimer/Railtown) and the Japanese community never truly recovered.

Hogan’s Alley also reached its peak in the 1940s when nearly 800 Black community members lived around the Strathcona neighbourhood.

Photo Source: City of Vancouver Archives

The DTES community saw a period of major transition after World War II that continued into the later 1900s.

As the 1950s arrived, the streetcar system stopped running through the DTES and the library moved out of the Carnegie Centre to a new location at Burrard and Robson Streets. Because of these developments and the previous move of City Hall to Broadway, visitors to the DTES decreased significantly.

The next decade saw the City of Vancouver continue to shift downtown resources to the west and away from the DTES.

In the 1970s, many of the hotels built for the early 1900s industry workers were converted into single-room occupancy units (SROs) because of the lack of affordable housing available in other parts of Vancouver.

The western end of Hogan’s Alley was torn down in 1971, as part of the City of Vancouver’s plan to build a freeway through Chinatown. The freeway was never completed thanks to community advocacy, but several houses from Hogan’s Alley were lost with the first phase of this plan: the completion of the Georgia Viaduct.

Around the same time, the DTES started to see an increase in community members who were earning low incomes.

Photo Source: City of Vancouver Archives

In the 1980s, mental health facilities in British Columbia started closing down, including psychiatric care at Riverview Hospital. The closure of these facilities led to many former patients moving to the DTES, because the SROs were the most affordable housing available.

The 1986 World Exposition also had an impact on the DTES. To make room for the influx of Expo 86 tourists, over 1,000 residents in SRO buildings were immediately evicted from their long-term homes and left scrambling to lower-quality hotels, shelters, or the streets.

This only foreshadowed how vulnerable low-income people would become in Vancouver. After the World Fair, the city underwent rapid development and gentrification projects that swept hundreds of affordable housing units off the map.

All of this was happening as the prevalence of substance dependence in the DTES was becoming an increasing concern. More community members started to consume cocaine because it was cheaper than heroin.

The increased presence of drugs and substance dependence in the community coincided with a rise in concerns around organized crime. Vancouver being a port city also added to this concern.

In the 1990s, landmark department store Woodward’s went out of business, and this led to many other remaining businesses doing the same. These closures hurt the DTES, as people from outside the neighbourhood stopped visiting the community.

Photo Source: UGM

Even as businesses left the neighbourhood, in the early 2000s, the Downtown Eastside continued to be squeezed by influences like gentrification, housing unaffordability, and a rapidly expanding opioid crisis. A public health emergency was announced in BC in 2016, and since then, more than 16,000 people have lost their lives to the toxic drug crisis — many of them in Vancouver.

Over time, the prevalence of poverty, homelessness, and addiction in the Downtown Eastside has earned the neighbourhood the unfortunate label of “poorest postal code in Canada.”

Several homeless encampments have been set up over the years, notably at:

In April 2023, the community faced a major challenge with the Hastings Street decampment.

All of these details provide a glimpse into the complexity and intersectionality of the issues the DTES faces. But these are not the only stories being told in the Downtown Eastside. There are also stories of transformation, hope, and of people in the community rallying together to offer each other support and care. A high number of relief organizations and health services have been established in the neighbourhood, and are working in partnership with community members to support people on journeys out of poverty, homelessness, and addiction. The neighbourhood is also home to many festivals and cultural celebrations, including the Heart of the City Festival, the Eastside Culture Crawl, and the Powell Street Festival.

Today, the Downtown Eastside is a neighbourhood of opposing truths: it’s a place where people experience incredible need each and every day, and it also remains a culturally diverse and creatively active community. Like each and every pocket of Vancouver, it’s a place deserving of respect, compassion, good policymaking, and continued curiosity and understanding of the historical factors that made it what it is today.

Continue reading to learn more about poverty, homelessness, and addiction, and how you can support people in the Downtown Eastside community.

Sources:

The History of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

Thanksgiving Meals Needed!

Sign Up to Receive Stories of Hope