VANCOUVER - Driving through the night along the seamy streets of Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside, three women in the large van dispense coffee, juice and conversation, along with condoms and clean needles, to sex-trade workers.
But funding for the Mobile Access Project, which began in 2003 with a converted ambulance, depends on the provincial government and there's been no promise to renew the money when it runs out at the end of April.
"So far not so good," says Kate Gibson, executive-director of the WISH Drop-in Centre Society that operates the van in partnership with the Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education Society (PACE).
The van used to get funding from the federal and provincial governments and the City of Vancouver.
But for the last two years it's been solely dependent on the province for the $265,000 needed annually to operate the vehicle and pay staff.
Victoria, Calgary and Halifax have similar programs, said Gibson, who has written to Rich Coleman, minister of housing and social development, and John van Dongen, minister of public safety, to push for funding renewal.
She got a letter saying only they would look into it.
No one from the government would comment on the fate of the funding.
The van with three paid staff operates seven nights a week from 10:30 p.m. to 5:30 a.m.
"That's primarily what the money goes to," said Gibson.
On a typical night workers will talk to about 50 prostitutes, as many as 1,400 in a month, says Gibson.
"They live and work in complete isolation," says Gibson. "They know the van will come. They know that somebody will be there. Somebody can hear them. Somebody can help them."
She says the project's success can be gauged by talking to the women.
"You measure success by how the women on the street feel about it and how much safer they feel because it's there," Gibson says.
Many women make their "bad date reports" -- information about clients who beat them or fail to pay -- with van personnel.
"The van is there when they work," says Gibson. "It's not the same as having a conversation with someone way after the fact."
The women inside the van also know the game. Some were in the sex-trade.
The bad guys know about the van too, says Gibson.
"There are all kinds of predators who know it's out there," she says.
The Downtown Eastside was the hunting ground of serial Robert Pickton, convicted of murdering six women and facing trial in the deaths of 20 more.
Gibson says in a 2006 report compiled by WISH and PACE, 16 per cent of van users recalled a specific incident in which the van's presence prevented them from being sexually assaulted.
Fifty-seven per cent said they had reported bad dates to van staff.
The number of condoms and needles distributed continues to rise and the van collects more than 1,200 used needles a month.
The program began as a pilot project in 2003 in response to an HIV-AIDS epidemic on the Downtown Eastside, along with an alarming number of drug overdose deaths.
Funding came through the Vancouver Agreement between the city, province and Ottawa to fund projects aimed at improving the health and safety of the city.
Christine Lattey, executive director of Vancouver Agreement, described the van project as "successful and really important."
But she said the Vancouver Agreement, which expires in 2010, only co-ordinated pilot projects and the van program "is now an ongoing service and the agreement doesn't have funding for that."
Karen Mirsky, a lawyer and sex work community liaison for the Pivot Legal Society that operates in the Downtown Eastside, agrees the van plays a crucial role.
Pivot is worried police will crack down on street activity in the Downtown Eastside in an attempt to clean up the neighbourhood before the 2010 Winter Olympics next February.
"It is very important that (the van) continue to operate because crackdowns displace sex industry workers who are the most vulnerable as they work at street level," she says.
A crackdown risks chasing sex-trade workers to remote areas where they're easier prey for predators, says Mirsky.
Women new to the street are also more likely to seek help from the van than go into a government office, she adds.
Mirsky says she understands a government facing at least two years of deficits has some hard choices to make.
"But to save money on the backs of the most marginalized people in society is abhorrent to me," she says.
