Much Investment But Little Progress in Vancouver Slum

"With a year remaining in the agreement — and the 2010 Olympics about to put Vancouver in the world's spotlight — a Globe and Mail investigation has for the first time tallied how much public and private money has been poured into Canada's worst slum.

The result: More than $1.4-billion later, the Downtown Eastside is hardly better off.

An open-air drug market still thrives five minutes from a police station. The bathrooms of decrepit hotels still serve as shooting galleries for addicts. Prostitutes still offer their bodies from the curbside. Drug pushers still prey on the mentally diminished, multiplying the misery."