PACE Society, a non-profit that supports sex workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, is closing after 31 years.
In a message posted to its website, the society said it was closing because of “operational challenges, funding gaps, and debts,” as well as its charitable funding status being revoked, which affected what kind of funding it could apply for.
PACE’s last day will be July 31, with a gathering held at a later date to bring community members together to say goodbye. The non-profit did not respond to a media request before deadline.
The announcement is being met with rage and grief, as it drastically affects what services, supports and safety nets are available for street-based sex workers, who are some of the most marginalized people in society, say women with lived and living sex-work experience.
It’s women of colour and femme people of colour who most rely on PACE’s services, said Sekani Dakelth, who is Indigenous and Two-Spirit and a longtime member of PACE, and who worked for the organization for eight years.
These are often women who have already survived highly traumatic lives and are dealing with societal barriers and concurrent disorders, she said.
PACE was a place where women and femmes could be themselves, talk openly and honestly about their work, and build community by talking and learning about safety, reporting bad dates and sharing tips on how to safely navigate dangerous neighbourhoods, she said.
Organizations that support sex workers are vital resources, said Lorimer Shenher, former head of the Missing Persons Unit of the Vancouver Police Department and author of That Lonely Section of Hell, which tells the story of the botched investigation into serial killer Robert Pickton.
These organizations protect women from gender-based violence and horrific abuse by giving them a place to connect and organize, he said.
Shenher said neither the Vancouver Police Department nor the justice system in general are set up to protect sex workers or women in the Downtown Eastside from gender-based violence.
Police might not believe or act on a report of gender-based violence, and the courts aren’t set up to understand the nuances of consent and forced consent, he said.
This teaches sex workers and women to not go to the police, he said, adding, “They’re not trusted because the police haven’t earned that trust.”
Police did little to protect women when sex workers were disappearing from the Downtown Eastside between the 1970s and 1990s, and Shenher remembers trying to raise the alarm despite the police not finding any bodies.
In 2007 serial killer Robert Pickton was convicted of killing six women, although he claimed to have killed 49.
As part of a government inquiry after the trial, commissioner Wally Oppal wrote a report that highlighted how a lack of social services made sex workers vulnerable, and recommended the province fund 24-hour services that support sex workers to improve safety.
Organizations like PACE and the WISH Drop-In Centre Society were critical of this report because of its narrow scope and the exclusion of important voices, and because it was generally seen as too little too late after the government ignored community concerns for decades. The government was slow to adopt the report’s recommendations, too, according to an open letter sent to the attorney general in 2013.
A 2016 report by the auditor general further criticized B.C. for not publicly reporting what progress it was making toward meeting Oppal’s recommendations, but did note that the province had set up ongoing funding for WISH and provided one-time funding for PACE.
Fast-forward to today, and the two organizations focused on supporting street-based sex workers in Vancouver — PACE and WISH — haven’t had drop-in centres since December 2024, meaning there’s nowhere for women to go at night.
“It makes me afraid because the conditions are absolutely there for violent men to prey on women,” Shenher said. “The conditions are actually better than they have ever been, and that’s so disturbing to me.”
Lisa Kreut, an activist and former sex worker who served on the board at PACE, said the stakes are literally life and death for sex workers.
“PACE was offering services people need to survive,” like offering a place to eat, nap, wash and access harm reduction supplies, she said.
Losing these services “means people are going to die,” Kreut said.
“It’s really scary that services that are designed to support sex workers are dwindling and will soon be gone, which means we’re losing the safety and continuum of care which is so vital for this community,” Dakelth added.
She said she cried for two hours when she heard PACE was closing.
PACE’s final day will be July 31. This ends 31 years of services designed by sex workers for sex workers, and will cut sex workers off from important services such as therapy, and a safe place to shower.
Kreut said she’s dealing with similar feelings of grief but is also “extremely frustrated” with certain members of PACE’s management.
“This was avoidable and they would have had ample warning that this was coming,” she said. “Losing your charitable status isn’t something that happens overnight. This appears to be a collapse not of austerity, but mismanagement.”
Kreut and Dakelth said they’re frustrated by the lack of transparency and accountability that happens in the non-profit sector. If PACE had been able to talk about its struggles earlier, maybe something could have been done to keep it open, they said.
PACE did not answer by press time The Tyee’s questions about how the loss of their charitable status transpired.
‘Systematic stigma’ hampered PACE
The stigma of sex work affects all levels of the industry and means that services set up to support sex workers are doomed to eventually fail, said Olive Bing, a sex worker who has volunteered with, worked for and sat on the board of PACE.
Stigma means governments and high-level donors “don’t want to endorse sex work, but also don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Bing said. This can prevent any meaningful action from taking place, or it can mean that donations will have strict conditions, she said.
What would be really helpful is if donors allowed organizations that support sex work to work with their accountants, because most teams supporting sex workers are made up of social workers and volunteers, not accountants, she added.
At the organizational level, stigma means people get burned out because the whole world is against them and everyone has to fight for their share of funding or resources, Bing said. This can make organizations lose sight of how they’re all fighting for the same goal, which is to improve labour conditions and safety for sex workers.
Stigma exists even among sex workers, because they are forced to fight over what little resources are available to them, which affects their ability to work together and have the energy to organize together, she said.
Bing said it’s “systematic stigma” that drove PACE into the ground. She is concerned that similar forces will force other organizations to close.
That will affect all sex workers in Vancouver in many tangible ways, but also in less direct ways too.
For example, PACE advocated for sex workers to be recognized as frontline workers and helped get them some of the early COVID-19 vaccines, said Elizabeth Fields, who has been doing sex work for seven years and accessed PACE’s services during the pandemic.
“I was broke when the pandemic broke out and had no choice but to work as safely as I could throughout it,” she said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to pay my bills.”
B.C.-based adult performer Sarah Moon said PACE helped connect her with a therapist who understood issues related to sex work.
At the time, she said, she was leaving an abusive relationship but struggling to distance herself from her ex because she had signed on to sponsor their permanent residency application to move to Canada.
PACE connected her to therapy and to legal resources, which helped clarify her legal and financial obligations to her ex. She said she wouldn’t have been able to afford therapy without PACE.
“They’ve taken an enormous weight off my shoulders and helped me become the person I am today,” she said.
In its Facebook post, PACE said it is working on archiving and preserving parts of its work and will maintain its registration as a non-profit society in B.C. “in hopes we can come back in some form in the future.”
Shenher said he’s not sure when that might be, because as a society we’re not paying attention to the “epidemic” of gender-based violence.
“Most people will read about PACE closing and think, ‘Oh, that’s too bad,’ but won’t worry too much because they haven’t heard about any missing women or serial killers,” he said. “But we learned from Pickton that it takes a lot for police to notice those who go missing. If you’re not looking for a problem, you won’t see a problem, and [the VPD] are definitely not looking for a problem.”
High-profile cases like the recent acquittal of the five members of the Hockey Canada sexual assault trial feed into the culture of violence against women, Shenher said.
If you were a bad person, you would look at the news and see that these hockey players weren’t found guilty, which signals that you can pick up women in Vancouver, do whatever you want and won’t get punished, he said.
This is why the Canadian government needs to step up and help organizations that are supporting sex workers and women, especially as the country heads into an economic downturn, Fields said.
Services supporting women and offering STI testing, pregnancy supports and birth control have also been closing due to a lack of funding, she said.
“The government needs to recognize how integral these organizations are to communities — communities that already struggle to thrive in this economic crisis and ever-changing political state,” she said.
