Editing Skid row (section)

===Vancouver===
{{Main article|Downtown Eastside}}
[[File:DTES Alley Culture 02.jpg|thumb|[[Downtown Eastside]]]]
The 100-block of East Hastings Street in [[Vancouver, British Columbia]], the heart of that city's "skid road" neighborhood, lies on a historical skid road.<ref>[https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=8283 DESCRIPTION OF HISTORIC PLAC12 Hastings Street] Retrieved 17 September 2023</ref> The Vancouver Skid Road was part of a complex of such roads in the dense forests surrounding the [[Hastings Mill]] and adjacent to the settlement of Granville, Burrard Inlet ([[Gastown]]).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.virtualvancouver.com/gastown.html|title=Gastown|publisher=Virtual Vancouver|access-date=2008-02-10|archive-date=2008-02-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080209220612/http://www.virtualvancouver.com/gastown.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>

The city began as a sawmill settlement called Granville, in the early 1870s.<ref name="AVan">{{cite web |url=http://vancouver.ca/aboutvan.htm|title=About Vancouver |publisher=City of Vancouver |year=2007 |access-date=2007-01-27}}</ref> By at least the 1950s, "Skid Road" was commonly used to describe the more dilapidated areas in the city's [[Downtown Eastside]],<ref>"Demolish City's Skid Road, Murder Protest Demands." Vancouver Sun. April 6, 1962. p. 1.</ref> which is focused on the original "strip" along East Hastings Street due to a concentration of [[single-room occupancy]] hotels (SROs) and associated drinking establishments in the area. The area's seedy origins date back to the early concentration of saloons in pre-Canadian Prohibition (1915–1919) and its popularity with loggers, miners and fishermen whose work was seasonal and who spent their salaries in the area's cheap accommodations and public houses.{{citation needed|date=April 2013}}

[[Opium]] and [[heroin]] use became popular early on; Vancouver was for many years the main port-of-entry for the North American opium supply. During the Great Depression, the railway rights-of-way and other vacant lots in the area were thronged by the unemployed and poor, and the pattern of social decay became well-established. In the 1970s, the endemic alcohol and poverty problems in the area were exacerbated by the expansion of the drug trade, with [[crack cocaine]] becoming high-profile in the 1980s as well as a re-concentration of the prostitution trade in the area because of the relocation of hooker strolls in conjunction with city policy for [[Expo 86]].{{citation needed|date=April 2013}}

A portion of Vancouver's Skid Row, [[Gastown]], has also been [[Gentrification|gentrified]]; however it is in a difficult coexistence with the nearby impoverished [[Downtown Eastside]] along East Hastings Street.{{citation needed|date=April 2013}}

The Downtown Eastside is deemed to be one of the poorest urban areas in [[Canada]].<ref name="Poorest">{{cite news |url=http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/909 |title=The Poorest Postal Code Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in Photos |last=Kalache |first=Stefan |publisher=The Dominion |date=January 12, 2007 |access-date=2007-10-15}}</ref> It is wedged between popular tourist destinations such as Downtown, [[Chinatown, Vancouver|Chinatown]] and Gastown. East Hastings Street is also a major thoroughfare. These avenues of exposure make the Downtown Eastside a highly visible example of a skid row.

The Downtown Eastside (sometimes abbreviated D.T.E.S.) is also home to [[Insite]], the first legal [[intravenous drug]] safe injection site in North America, part of a [[harm reduction]] policy aimed at helping the area's drug addicted residents. Additional sites have been established with approval from Health Canada in 2017 and 2018 as part of the strategy for dealing with the epidemic of lethal opioid (primarily [[fentanyl]]) overdoses.