
Dave Rouleau and Monika Benkovich were hired to gentrify the York Rooms. And it seems to have worked. The 36-room hotel was one of many run-down SROs (single-room occupancy) now peppered among the high-end restaurants and trendy shops popping up throughout the quickly changing Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. The DTES is known casually as "Canada's poorest postal code;" a majority of its residents live below the poverty line and struggle with addiction and mental illness alongside a lack of access to proper housing and the services they need. While "cleaning up the neighbourhood" might sound like a noble endeavor, it often comes at the expense of residents.
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