Violence against sex workers has been increasing in Vancouver as government support for organizations supporting sex workers shrinks.
When governments cut their budgets, funding for organizations that support sex workers are often the first to be cut and the last to be re-funded, experts told The Tyee.
That means extremely marginalized sex workers are losing access to some of the only services that protect their health and safety.
Experts say this puts sex workers’ lives at risk — and is already leading to an increase in violence.
One of the few protections sex workers have when doing street-based sex work is to talk with a client before getting into a car, said Susan Davis, who is the executive director for the BC Coalition of Experiential Communities and has done sex work for 38 years.
When it’s raining or snowing, women are “the most desperate.”
“You’ll get in the car just to warm up — before you know if he’s got enough money or if you’re willing to do what he wants,” she said. “It undermines all the safety techniques there are for sex workers who are on the street. And those safety techniques are minimal at best in the first place.”
Davis says she was robbed and sexually assaulted on a night when she had “jumped in a car” to get out of the snow and to make sure she had enough money to pay for a hotel room to sleep in.
Services such as drop-in centres for sex workers help protect women by giving them a safe place to warm up so they don’t feel pressured to rush into a client’s car to escape the elements. They can also use the washroom to clean up between clients, access harm reduction or other social services, check up on community members and see if there are any reports of bad dates in their area.
A bad date can include a client being violent or threatening, not paying, or not sticking to the agreed upon services.
People working in the Downtown Eastside say they have already seen an increase in gender-based violence as services decline over the last year.
“We have seen an increase in assaults, sexual assaults and physical assaults, particularly when the sex worker organizations closed or reduced services,” said Kaley Merritt, an advocate with the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre.
The Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre’s victim services and sexual assault response teams are seeing an increase in workload, she says. Even then, most assaults go unreported because sex workers do not trust police to bring them justice, Merritt said.
People doing street-based sex work also likely don’t have the time to stop working and report a crime because they still need to make enough money for a hotel room to sleep in, Davis added.
Spaces that support sex workers are so important that Missing Women commissioner Wally Oppal recommended, in 2012, that the province fund 24-hour services to protect the community from another serial killer like Robert Pickton.
Pickton was convicted in 2007 of killing six women but claimed to have killed 49 women over a three-decade span from the 1970s to the 1990s. Many of his victims were sex workers from the Downtown Eastside.
Pickton wasn’t the only serial killer preying on marginalized women in Vancouver at the time. In 2007, the Vancouver Police Department identified a man who was suspected of killing six women between 1988 and 1990, but the man died in 2009 before he was arrested. The VPD never released his name.
Suspicious deaths of vulnerable people continue to this day. In 2022 the remains of Chelsea Poorman, Noelle O’Soup and Tatyanna Harrison were found in various locations across the Lower Mainland within six months of one another. The families of the three have said they experienced “indifference” and “baffling” police decisions as they tried to get more information about what caused their loved ones’ deaths. In 2021, Katica Dusanic’s death in a man’s room in an SRO building was quickly ruled an accidental overdose — but the circumstances around Dusanic’s death were suspicious, and her mother suspects it was a homicide.
The sex worker community is always worried that another serial killer, or multiple serial killers, could still be operating in the Lower Mainland, Davis said.
When women disappear from the community, it can be hard to know what has happened to them. Experts say that organizations that support sex workers are best positioned to keep tabs and notice if anyone goes missing — but they often do not have the resources to do so.
Instead, fourteen years after Wally Oppall called for 24-hour services, many of Vancouver’s drop-in centres for sex workers are being forced to close or reduce their hours.
Unstable funding, service reductions
In December 2024, WISH Drop-In Centre Society, which supports street-based sex workers in the Downtown Eastside, closed its drop-in centre. The drop-in reopened in December 2025 from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. from Tuesday to Saturday.
WISH had to close its drop-in centre because “general revenue failed to keep up with rising costs and growing community need,” Kara Gillies, executive director of WISH, told The Tyee.
WISH also operates the Mobile Access Project Van, which drives around and offers outreach supports and harm reduction for street-based sex workers in Vancouver. In 2020 it was running 24-7. Today, it is supposed to run Thursday to Tuesday nights from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.
But a WISH staff member told The Tyee the MAP Van is only going out Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights and is struggling to schedule three people, so most nights it goes out with two.
PACE Society, which also supported street-based sex workers, closed its drop-in centre and suspended all services and programming July 2025.
The Kingsway Community Station is still operating its drop-in centre six days a week from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. The station is looking for a new location and is going through a transition period as the City of Vancouver ended its core funding and transferred it to annual grant-based funding.
The AESHA research project, or An Evaluation of Sex Workers Health Access, wrapped up in 2024. That ended the health-care supports that had been part of the project, such as a health clinic specifically for sex workers. AESHA was a 15-year-long study from the University of British Columbia that collected data from around 900 sex workers in diverse environments across Metro Vancouver.
The provincewide Living in Community non-profit has also recently had to lay off workers and suspend all services.
The only two organizations The Tyee reached out to that have not had to cut programs or consider layoffs are Peers Victoria Resources Society and SWAN Vancouver, which supports immigrant and migrant indoor sex workers.
The Tyee asked the province to comment on what it was doing to keep sex workers safe given how many of the organizations that support sex workers are closing or reducing their programming.
In its response, the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General pointed to $3.5 million it provided in 2023 as part of one-time grant funding that went towards organizations that support sex workers.
The grant money was for three years, which means it runs out this spring. WISH received $2.5 million, PACE received $500,000 and Peers Victoria Resources Society also received $500,000.
The province also pointed to work it is doing to protect people from human trafficking and gender-based violence, and supporting sexual assault survivors — issues that can be related to but are different from sex work.
“There have been no reductions in the number of contracts or funding levels for victim services and violence against women programs,” the government added. The ministry’s contracts have “received annual increases in keeping with negotiated wage increase agreements.”
Governments aren’t specifically cutting funding allocated for sex worker support organizations, said Jennie Pearson, an AESHA postdoctoral research fellow at UBC and Simon Fraser University.
But that’s in part because governments also haven’t specifically set up stable funding for critical programs serving sex workers, despite recommendations from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Calls for Justice, Red Women Rising and Oppal’s Forsaken report, she added.
Instead, governments are rolling back or not continuing a wide range of social supports that were being used to cobble together funding for sex worker supports, she said.
As an example of government funding that has been reduced or not renewed, Merritt pointed to the end of the federal Substance Use and Addictions Program, which was accessed by non-profits supporting sex workers.
Governments usually pursue austerity budgets when there’s an economic downturn, so more people are struggling to make ends meet at the same time as there’s less money allocated for social services, she added.
Police aren’t the answer to making sex work safer, experts say
In its 2026 budget, the City of Vancouver cut the funding for arts, culture and community services by 12 per cent, bringing the overall funding to $44.4 million, while at the same time boosting funding for the Vancouver Police Department by 10 per cent, bringing the force’s overall annual funding to $497 million.
The VPD also has a single funder: the local municipal government.
Organizations that support sex workers have a much more piecemeal funding stream. For example WISH, which is one of the larger non-profits supporting sex workers, had a revenue of $7.3 million in 2025, with funding coming from all three levels of government, foundations, donations, interest, expense recovery, amortization of deferred capital contributions and more.
The Vancouver Police Department has a sex industry liaison officer program, where the liaison officer works closely with sex workers when they’re dealing with the criminal justice system.
In an email to The Tyee, a VPD spokesperson said the liaison officer is more of an advocacy role than an enforcement one. The liaison officer can help transport people to victim services, medical appointments, out-of-town court commitments, or help people get placed in detox, transitional housing or community programs for mental health or employment.
When asked how to best get in touch with the officer now, the VPD spokesperson said someone can call 911 or the non-emergency line and make a report, which may get forwarded to the Human Trafficking Unit and/or the sex industry liaison officer.
The report is sent to both units and then each unit will review the case and decide if one or both of them should respond, the spokesperson said. The units are separate but often work closely, they added.
Although street-based sex work is not legal, the VPD spokesperson said sex work laws “aim to address prostitution by criminalizing buyers rather than sellers in order to protect vulnerable individuals,” and that “people who sell sexual services are generally not arrested because the law in many places is designed to protect them rather than punish them.”
Despite the fact that police forces generally have initiatives to work with sex workers, and have larger budgets, they aren’t the solution to keeping sex workers safe, Merritt said.
When Pickton was stalking Vancouver’s streets, for example, the police often ignored or discounted reports of sex workers going missing, being violently sexually assaulted or having someone who matched Pickton’s description confessing to murdering women on his pig farm in Port Coquitlam. Police were also accused of lying to sex workers and saying missing women had gone to rehab, or taken a trip to Mexico.
It’s hard to fully capture how much this destroyed any trust sex workers had in police, Davis said.
She recited from memory something a fellow sex worker said to her: “I wouldn’t call the police even if my brains were being bashed in.”
Canada’s sex work laws only allow for a narrow form of sex work to take place. Most aspects are criminalized.
For example, Canadian citizens are allowed to sell sex in private residences. But buying sex, doing sex work outside or in a car, and third-party services, such as a bouncer or a receptionist, are illegal. Immigration laws prohibit migrants and immigrants from doing sex work.
If sex workers ask police for help, experts told The Tyee, they may have to identify themselves as a sex worker, and if they do that they may be investigated, arrested or even deported.
Crystal Laderas, communications manager for SWAN Vancouver, said she knows of multiple incidents in the last year where sex workers were assaulted on the job. The women were so afraid of police arresting and potentially deporting them they didn’t go to the hospital and instead sought help from neighbours and friends.
The tactics police officers use can be “frustrating,” Davis said.
She’s spent a decade telling sex workers to call the Vancouver Police Department’s sex work liaison officer if they need help, but the department no longer lists their contact info, or information on sex worker safety, on its website. The VPD did not directly respond to questions about why, or when, this information was removed.
Davis said when she recently reached out to the Delta Police Department to help somebody report a sexual assault, the police recommended they come in and report the crime in person.
“Who’s going to do that? Who’s going to the front desk to say, ‘Hi, I’m a sex worker and I was just raped and I’d like to make a report.’ Nobody is doing that,” she said.
Canada’s sex work laws make it so that sex workers aren’t able to use online platforms or hire people to screen clients, says Andrea Krüsi, a professor at the Simon Fraser University School of Criminology, and principal investigator with the AESHA project.
If sex workers are finding clients while they’re on the street, the fear of police detection may cause them to get into a vehicle quickly, Krüsi added.
This limits their ability to check if the client is sober, if there is anyone else in the car or to negotiate services and fees, Krüsi said.
Clients will usually also drive to a secluded area to avoid police detection.
One AESHA study found from 2010 to 2018, sex workers only reported 26 per cent of the violence they experienced to police.
If they were immigrants or migrants, nearly nine out of 10 violent incidents went unreported to police.
What experts say about keeping sex workers safe
Governments could improve the safety of sex workers by investing in sex-worker specific supports, decriminalizing sex work and telling the police to invest time and resources into listening to and investigating crimes against sex workers, experts told The Tyee.
Davis and Leigh Elliot, the executive director of Peers Victoria Resources Society, said the government should provide stable, ongoing funding for organizations supporting sex workers, rather than less predictable annual grant-based funding.
Governments should consider these organizations critical infrastructure and fund them accordingly, Davis said.
It would be unthinkable, she added, for infrastructure like schools or health care to be funded on an annual grant basis.
Governments should also listen to what sex workers, especially BIPOC sex workers, are calling for, Merritt said. Generally, that’s decriminalization, protection, dignity and respect, she added.
A good first step is to fund existing organizations which have established relationships with sex workers, she added.
The government could also use its legislative powers to decriminalize sex work.
Decriminalization is the best way to support sex worker health, safety and rights, Krüsi said. She pointed to New Zealand, parts of Australia, and Belgium, which have all decriminalized sex work in some way.
After decriminalization, sex workers have been able to implement occupational health and safety guidelines, Krüsi says.
From a migrant justice perspective, SWAN’s Laderas says, immigrants and migrants are allowed to do sex work in parts of Australia, making these the only places that have fully decriminalized sex work.
In November 2025, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed a court case where the appellants tried to argue that by prohibiting third-party services, Canadian law was infringing on sex worker’s Charter rights.
In another case that is still making its way through the courts, the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform launched a constitutional challenge arguing in the Ontario Superior Court that the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act harms sex workers and violates Charter rights.
Police can also help by believing women and believing sex workers when they report a crime, Merritt said.
“They can take these things seriously and put time, energy and resources into sexual and physical assault cases,” she said. It’s especially important to listen to and believe Indigenous people, and give their cases the attention and resources they deserve, Merritt said.
Reducing violence and preventing the next Pickton
Merritt credits the advocacy of sex workers for eventually catching Robert Pickton, because they reported missing women to the Vancouver Police Department and continued to press the issue even as the police were slow to act.
The killings “went on for much longer than they should have and a lot more lives were lost as a result of that,” Merritt said.
As a result of police inaction on Pickton and in other cases of violence reported by sex workers, the community doesn’t trust the police as an institution, Merritt says.
Trust has not been restored.
There’s a lot of fear in the community that another serial killer will prey on women, Merritt said.
Police aren’t signalling they are willing to invest in protecting sex workers, she added, and violent perpetrators rarely face consequences.
Another example of police inaction, Merritt says, is the Highway of Tears, where advocates say more than 50 Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been murdered since the 1950s, but the RCMP has only investigated 18 cases, according to reporting by Al Jazeera.
Merritt says organizations on the Downtown Eastside have been trying to step up and support sex workers, but there’s a limited amount of support that already strained services can offer.
“The biggest fear is violence because we’ve already seen so much of that happen,” Merritt said.
“It brings into focus the lives that have been lost and the people who have been affected. Safety concerns are a huge, huge issue.”
