Poverty Tourism in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side
The above image is of East Van Roasters, a coffee shop located in the Downtown East Side, Vancouver, British Columbia, situated on the unceded territory of the Musqueam nation. The shop is a social enterprise staffed by residents of the Downtown East Side. The downtown East Side is an incredible, culturally diverse, connected community, but it is also one of the poorest postal codes in Canada (Skelton, 2010). It is home to folks dealing with mental illness and addiction, indigenous people, LGBTQIA+ folks, People of Colour, Immigrants, Victims of Abuse and many more. Because of its unique, complicated, and sometimes troubled history, the Downtown East Side (shortened to DTES) attracts attention from across the country. Unfortunately, this attention has lead to outsiders engaging in heartless shaming of the “dangerous” nature of the DTES (Downtown Eastside…, 2017), gentrifying the neighborhood and further removing its inhabitants from their homes (Walia et al, 2012), or pandering narcissistic attempts to “help”, rather than support. An example of one of these misguided attempts to help is a tour conducted in the neighborhood which featured East Van Roasters.
Recently, this fixation with the DTES by outsiders has been critiqued as a walking tour set in the community was vilified as “exploitative” and “dehumanizing” (Puri, 2016). The tour guide, Jean Potter with Tours by Locals advertises herself as a local of Vancouver offering a “”socially responsible” exploration of a neighborhood which would otherwise make her guests uncomfortable (Mundy, 2016). The tours, priced $185 to $275, focus on exploring the local businesses and social enterprises present in the DTES such as East Van Roasters. Clearly these tours are aimed at wealthy people from outside of Vancouver looking to get an “authentic” view, or locals who are curious about the true nature of the neighborhood. Guests would be guided through the neighborhood viewing the struggles of, but never interacting with, it’s residents. Residents even responded by staging their own “yuppy gazing tour” in protest, an act which indicated a clear discomfort with the prospect of being used as entertainment for wealthy outsiders. However, after coming under fire for its perception as poverty voyeurism, Potter attempted to explain that the goal of the tour was to help augment to social enterprises present in the DTES and to give outsiders an opportunity to learn about the plight of its inhabitants. On the surface, this seems like an innocent goal, however, the complexity of the seemed innocence can be directly compared to the “ethical tourism” discussed by Gada Mahrouse.
In Feel-good tourism? An ethical option for socially-conscious Westerners Mahrouse discusses the racial, gendered and class based power dynamics at play as westerners are guided through the struggling communities of the global south. The guests of Mahrouse’ tour closely resemble those of Potter’s: wealthy white folks looking to separate themselves from the normal tourist, hoping to do something good for a community while also experiencing the luxury that their race and class buys them. Like Mahrouse tourists, Potters guests likely choose to do such a tour in order to feign a type of innocence, to separate themselves from the responsibility of the deep inequality present on Hastings street. These people want to understand and help the communities they visit, but fail to grasp the idea that one does not have to experience something personally to understand it. Simply listening to the needs of the people of the DTES should be enough, but for these people it is not. Guests on these tours may feel that since they have visited the streets on which people of the DTES live they understand their needs, they think that buying a food token at the local restaurant “Save On Meats” and giving it to a local person so they can redeem the free meal is an indication that they have helped them. Many of these guests will go home and think they speak for the people of the DTES, donate to organizations which perhaps appear to help it people but ignore the institutional issues of colonialism, racism, sexism, classism and homophobia which force people into poverty.
The offering and engagement in Potter’s poverty tour is an indication of the fundamental lack of understanding of how privilege shifts the balance of interactions between the wealthy, white outsiders of the DTES and those within the community. It is a prime example of how people of privilege engage in seemingly ethical consumption as a means to knowing themselves as helpful activists while ignoring the larger structures that maintain the power imbalances which afford them those very opportunities.
Puri, Belle. (2016). Walking tours exploit Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, advocates say. Retrieved from: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/walking-tours-exploit-vancouver-s-downtown-eastside-advocates-say-1.3713724
Skelton, Chad. (2010). Is Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside really “Canada’s poorest postal code”? Retrieved from: http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/is-vancouvers-downtown-eastside-really-canadas-poorest-postal-code
Downtown Eastside in Vancouver and Other Warnings and Dangers. (2017). Smarter Travel. Retrieved from: https://www.smartertravel.com/2017/02/23/downtown-eastside-vancouver-warnings-dangers/
Mahrouse, Gada. (2011). Feel-good tourism? An ethical option for socially-conscious Westerners. ACME, 10(3): 372-391.
Mundy, Jane. (2016). Tour highlights socially responsible ventures. Retrieved from: http://www.vancourier.com/community/tour-highlights-socially-responsible-ventures-1.2263074
Walia, H.Diewert, D. (2012). Moving on up: Gentrification in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Retrieved from: http://rabble.ca/news/2012/02/moving-gentrification-vancouvers-downtown-eastside