For thousands of years, the Coast Salish peoples have flourished in the land that is now Vancouver We honor the three great Nations whose land this is: Squamish Nation, Musqueam Nation and Tsleil-Waututh Nation. We are so grateful to be guests in this unceded territory.

Who We Are

The BC Coalition of Experiential Communities are a regional democratic organization of sex workers who are activists mandated as a mechanism for the voices of experiential people to support the development of legislation and policies; peer driven programs and services; and work toward the elimination of oppressive systems and forces that create harm within the sex industry.

The Pandemic

The BCCEC received funding from the Canadian Women’s Foundation and the City of Vancouver to work on issues facing sex workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. This funding was for addressing issues of safety for our community as they arouse during the lock downs and restriction phases.

The BCCEC met frequently to deal with multi layered issues as they emerged. Complaints and challenges around housing were discussed as part of this work.

Background

The stigma surrounding sex work affects many aspects of sex workers lives. Housing is one of the areas where sex workers often experience bias, discrimination and violations of their rights.

While sex workers are not named as a “protected” group under the Chart of Rights in Canada as it relates to discrimination and promotion of hatred, housing is one area where our rights ARE protected under the law. This is not widely known and understood however and as such our community have had to contend with issues related to housing discrimination as long as can be remembered.

The housing crisis being faced across Canada has exasperated the situation and compounded problems experienced by sex workers trying to secure or maintain their housing.

The bias experienced by sex workers trying find housing is not limited to full contact sex workers. Exotic dancers, adult content creators, adult film actors, escorts, massage providers, independent sex workers, fetish providers, BDSM providers and everyone in between experience the same stigma regardless of their location in the industry.

The Complaints

When applying for housing sex workers cannot reveal their sex worker status and have developed “work arounds” to deal with some of the challenges.

For example;

• Gaps in resumes/ work references – revealing sex work experience on an application for housing will almost always result in rejection of application. As a result, sex workers develop “fake references” or fake jobs to fill their housing applications.

In the days before social media it was a simple fix with sex workers providing references for each other. One sex worker pretends to be an employer for the other sex worker. Then the sex worker playing the role of employer will provide their phone number for the employer reference and answer any questions from the potential landlord.

Now, in the time of social media sex workers have to maintain multiple account identities in order to protect their ability to find housing. A “forward facing account” and a “work account”. A quick search of a persons name or phone number can be the difference between getting housing and not.

Once housing has been approved, sex workers are not out of the woods. In some cases neighbors and building managers can make life impossible for sex workers.

• Nosy Neighbors/ Building Managers –
  • Building managers can be difficult – questioning all guests to the building about which tenant they are visiting, demanding access to the suite without proper notice, letting themselves into the suit with no notice or warning whether we are home or not, extortion of sex for silence on sex worker status, threats of child removal during extortion for sex and other violence.
  • Neighbors can also be just as violent – in one case a group of sex workers had moved in together to save on expenses and one of their neighbors called City services and police to complain more than 100 times in one day. This resulted in all of the sex workers being detained, removed from the premises in handcuffs and publicly humiliated in various stages of dress as they were paraded out in front of the neighbor who had orchestrated their arrest.
• Hatred/ Hate crimes – Sex workers are not a group recognized under the Charter as a group who experience discrimination and are the subject of hatred. This does not mean these crimes are not part of our lives. Neighbors, building managers and even children all commit hate crimes against our community. Yelling slurs and derogatory language and throwing things like garbage and beer bottles at sex workers have all been reported.
• Sexual harassment and sexual assault have also occurred as a result of a sex workers status becoming known by the wrong person in the community where we live. This particularly difficult when the cowards who perpetrate these crimes know precisely where we live.

Property managers and landlords have long been a risk for sexual harassment and sexual assault with reports of these offenses going back beyond the history of the BCCEC.

• Extortion – People who know where a sex workers lives and details about their lives have power as a land lord or property manager. Extortion for both sex and money under threat of child removal/ report to child services or schools, threat of “outing” to family, friends or work place outside of sex work or physical violence toward families of sex workers and sex workers themselves have all been reported.

To make things worse, supportive housing managed by non-profits, housing funded by the province or municipal governments, BC Housing and other housing bodies who are in charge of supporting the “hard to house” have adopted documents known as “Good Neighbor Agreements” which ban sex work outright and exclude our community from any opportunities for housing in these venues.

In a particularly violent case, not for profit organization who were managing supportive housing would wait outside the door of the sex worker to listen for any sounds of sex inside. If they thought they could hear the sex worker “working” they would use their key to open the door and surprise the sex worker or “catch the sex worker in the act”.

This of course involved humiliation of the sex worker who would be naked or partially dressed and “engaged” with the sex buyer. A “talking to” would follow with threats of eviction and overt over surveillance would continue making the sex worker feel unsafe in their own home and forcing them to work outside, on the street or in sex buyers cars where they are more vulnerable to violence.

This is an extreme but not unique example of how these “good neighbor agreements” play out in practice.

The agreements give the people who manage our housing power over our lives, power over our safety, power to harm us and provide an opportunity for exploitation.

The BCCEC Director suggested a review of the laws to find a potential legal remedy to these issues and discovered a series of important facts and issues;

The Review

From the Government of BC Residential Tenancy Agreement template;

GovBC Tenancy Agreement

2)The landlord may enter the rental unit only if one of the following applies:

a)at least 24 hours and not more than 30 days before the entry,

the landlord gives the tenant a written notice which states i)the purpose for entering, which must be reasonable, and

ii)the date and the time of the entry, which must be between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. unless the tenant agrees otherwise;

It is illegal for building managers or landlords to enter the home of any person without 24 hour written notice or permission of the tenant. In this case, the building managers went well beyond that and waited for the most humiliating opportunity to enter the premises illegally justifying their actions by stating sex work was occurring in violation of the “Good Neighbor Agreement”.

From the BC Housing Tenant Handbook page 26;

Crime Free Addendum

Since 1998, all new BC Housing tenants sign the Crime Free Housing Addendum when they move in. The addendum states that: The tenant(s), any occupant of the tenant(s’) household and any persons invited onto the residential property or residential premise by the tenant(s) or any member of the tenant(s’) family shall not engage in any criminal activity on the premises or property including, but not limited to:

any drug-related criminal activity;

solicitation (sex-trade workers and related nuisance activity);

From the Residential Tenancy Act;

Unconscionable Terms

Under the Residential Tenancy Act and the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act, a term of a tenancy agreement is unconscionable if the term is oppressive or grossly unfair to one party.

These policies and practices are not only illegal but also in direct conflict with the City of Vancouver Sex Work Response Guidelines and the recommendations of the City of Vancouver Task Force which examined these issues in relation to the Forsaken Report – Public Inquiry into the Case of the Missing Women – findings.

Actions Taken

BCCEC Members have reported these complaints to the City of Vancouver in particular as it relates to City funded properties. Members of the BCCEC have taken up the complaints and begun the process of engaging with those bodies responsible for addressing these issues.

The CoV Sex work social planning team arranged a meeting between BCCEC Members and housing providers to discuss the issues being raised.

Many housing providers seemed surprised or unaware of the issues with these policies and practices as they play out in real life.

The Director of the BCCEC began to broadly review municipal housing programs and polices in an effort to discover the source of the “Good Neighbor Agreements”.

Many municipalities across Canada have implemented planning recommendations related to public safety and sex work. Terms like “family friendly” are used in planning to deliberately eliminate and exclude sex workers and the places where we work from cities all together.

In some cases City Councils directed planning staff overtly and in plain language to remove massage parlors, adult stores and exotic show lounges from zoning and permits completely.

Part of the work to protect communities from “crime” also became to eliminate sex workers as individuals from the community completely.

Crime Free Multi Housing Program

Phase 1:

Resident managers and/or owners attend a one day seminar presented by the Police in partnership with the BC Crime Prevention Association. Cost is $75.

Topics include:

• crime prevention concepts

• preparing and maintaining the property

• applicant screening

• working together with police

• Residential Tenancy Act (good neighbor agreements)

• combating illegal activities

A new project emerged for “risk management” in housing. Developed by police, promoted by local police departments and RCMP in every community in Canada and managed by Non-Profits or the police them selves who charge a fee for taking part in the Crime Free Multi Housing Training Certification Program.

For the past 25 years, police and communities have worked together to exclude sex workers from finding housing.

This program has cast sex workers as criminals who are dangerous to the community and is the source of the “Good Neighbor Agreements”.

Participants in the training are taught how to recognize sex workers by surveilling them for;

• too many guests
• guests late at night
• wearing inappropriate clothing
• owning expensive items
• having tattoos

These descriptions could be anyone and indeed this learned bias impacts non sex working people as well. In particular young single people are impacted as they are over surveilled and judged for how they dress or who and how they love.

This program continues to operate across Canada creating the violent conditions described above.

Recommendations

BCCEC Members are still working to unravel these issues. Criminalization of sex work has worked it’s way into every corner of our society.

As these issues are ongoing the BCCEC recommend the following;

• To immediately cease all sections of Crime Free Multi Housing Certification Training related to sex work, sex workers and sex industry businesses;
• To advocate for the elimination of the use of “Good Neighbor Agreements” in government funded and supportive housing;
• To further explore the impacts of these kinds of policies and programs on sex workers ability to find and maintain housing;
• To work with all stakeholders to develop fair housing policy which respects safety for all citizens including sex workers and their families;
• To create registry to which those property managers or landlords who engage in violence against a sex worker or who tolerates violence from another person against a sex worker can be reported;
• To create training materials with sex workers experiences at the center to counter the exclusion from housing experienced over the past 25 years and for use during crime prevention training of property managers and landlords;
• To create new mechanisms for sex workers to report violent or unsafe properties ;
• To create a public campaign to raise awareness about the changes in housing policies and of the “bad landlord” registry among the sex worker community;
• To acknowledge the unintended harms of these policy decisions decades ago.

Going Forward

City of Vancouver Sex work social planners committed to pursuing solutions to these issues and to keeping the BCCEC in the loop if any opportunities for dialogue emerge or solutions are proposed.

The BCCEC will seek funding support for a detailed exploration of the impacts of housing exclusion on sex workers who are homeless and whose housing is precarious.

BCCEC Members remain committed to addressing these issues and supporting sex workers in any way possible to find housing.