A Sad Tale of  Four Cities but there's Many More.......Before and After: The rise and fall of Vancouver's original vibrant city centre in the Downtown Eastside The Daily Hive Kenneth Chan Dec 26 2025 Over the first six decades of the 20th century, what is now known as the Downtown Eastside functioned as Vancouver’s original and thriving downtown. Archival photographs from the 1910s through the 1960s show a Downtown Eastside that stands in sharp contrast to its present-day condition. The intersection of East Hastings Street and Main Street was the era’s equivalent of today’s intersection of West Georgia Street and Granville Street — a focal point of commerce, public transit, and civic life. Hastings Street was lined with quintessential “big city” commercial uses: shops, major anchor department stores (most famously Woodward’s), banks, office buildings, hotels, theatres, and restaurants. This mix attracted middle- and upper-class shoppers as well as daily workers from across Metro Vancouver.
 
The Downtown Eastside served as the region’s primary Central Business District, closely tied to streetcars and interurban rail networks that connected the city and suburbs — services that disappeared by the 1950s. The Downtown Eastside’s vitality extended beyond its buildings and businesses. It was equally defined by its street life, public events, and entertainment. Hastings Street regularly hosted large public gatherings and major parades. One of the most prominent was the annual PNE Fair opening parade, which drew massive crowds along the street every summer for nearly six decades, until 1995.

Events like these reinforced Hastings Street’s role as the city’s ceremonial main street — Vancouver’s primary public showcase. In later years, this civic role shifted westward, to municipally designated ceremonial streets such as West Georgia Street and Burrard Street. The Great Depression struck Vancouver in 1929, with impacts that lingered well into the 1930s. The Downtown Eastside felt these effects early and intensely, as it was often the first place where job seekers arrived — and stayed — when employment failed to materialize.

At the same time, the region’s economic and civic “centre of gravity” began to move west. Key decisions — such as the 1912 construction of the courthouse and the relocations of Vancouver City Hall and Vancouver Public Library’s Central Branch — along with broader planning and economic trends, redirected investment and foot traffic away from the Downtown Eastside. Commercial energy increasingly consolidated in the emerging downtown core to the west. As institutions and visitors moved, many businesses followed, gradually reducing daily activity and weakening the customer base that had sustained a bustling retail and entertainment district.

The disappearance of Japantown also played a role in the Downtown Eastside’s decline. Before the Second World War, the Powell Street area was a vibrant Japanese Canadian community that supported local businesses and street life. The forced removal and internment of Japanese Canadians beginning in 1942 abruptly dismantled this community, and few residents were able to return after the war, leaving a lasting social and economic void in the neighbourhood......and tragically this old urban precinct evolved into an almost forgotten run-down retail area full of SRO's and finally into the slum with decayed tents and garbage on the sidewalks that it is now.....and it's crawling a little into the existing urban core!  https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/downtown-eastside-vancouver-photos-before-after                                                                     

This is not unique to Vancouver- other cities in Canada are infected, and in the US some cities this decay has taken over the entire downtown area!6 US cities where fear of homelessness has reached crisis levels, survey finds. MSN Marcel Kuhn12-12-2025  Walking through certain neighborhoods feels like navigating an entirely different reality.                                                                                                                                                                    The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reported approximately 75,500 homeless individuals in Los Angeles County in 2023, creating visible encampments that residents never imagined would become permanent fixtures. Honestly, the scale is staggering when you see it firsthand.                                                                                                                  Las Vegas: The Surprising Crisis Behind The Neon. Las Vegas tells a story few saw coming. Las Vegas presents a unique case where the glitz and glamour of the Strip contrasts sharply with one of the nation's fastest-growing homelessness crises, as Clark County is experiencing its highest level of homelessness in a decade, with 7,928 people recorded in 2024 – a 56% increase over the past three years.The fear in Las Vegas is particularly acute because residents had not expected their city to join the ranks of major metropolitan areas struggling with visible homelessness. That shock factor makes the crisis feel even more overwhelming.                                                                                           Chicago: Racial Disparities And Migrant Pressures. The City's annual Point-in-Time Count of people experiencing homelessness estimated 18,836 people experiencing homelessness in shelters or unsheltered locations on January 25, 2024, a three-fold increase from the 2023 estimate of 6,139 people. What's deeply troubling is the racial dimension. The PIT identified that 72% of the total non-New Arrivals population in Chicago experiencing homelessness during the 2024 PIT Count identified as Black or African American, but less than 30% of residents in Chicago identify as Black or African American, a disparity that highlights systemic inequalities that the crisis has intensified rather than created.                        New York City: The Epicenter Of American Homelessness. New York City stands as the epicentre of America's homelessness crisis, with the situation reaching unprecedented levels in 2024, as between 2023 and 2024, New York saw a 53 per cent increase in homelessness. Think about that for a moment - a majority increase in just one year in the nation's largest city......read on    https://www.msn.com/en-us/public-safety-and-emergencies/general/6-us-cities-where-fear-of-homelessness-has-reached-crisis-levels-survey-finds/ar-AA1T80zB?ocid=BingNewsVerp