When Marla Bolton wants to make a phone call, shes usually at a loss.
The Downtown Eastside resident doesnt have a cellphone and with payphones a scarce commodity in the neighbourhood, shes often left to find passersby who will let her use their phones.
Its hard, especially if theres an emergency, says Bolton, who identified herself as a sex trade worker.
Its women like her that Caitlin Williams and a group of volunteers loosely associated with Spartacus Books had in mind when they pooled their resources to install a free phone outside the bookstore at 684 E. Hastings St.
A few of us from the bookstore realized that theres quite a few people who always come in and request to use our phone, says Williams, a member of an ad-hoc group calling itself the Peoples Phone Booth Collective. After we looked into it, we realized there really arent a heck of a lot of phones in the Downtown Eastside and the ones that are available get shut off at 9pm.
The group salvaged wood from alleyways to create a make-shift booth, covering it with a tarp, and bought a secondhand touch-tone phone. The phone line, which is bundled in with the stores Internet service, costs about $25 a month. Williams says since the booth went up two weeks ago its been in steady use, at times with lineups of local residents looking to make calls to friends and family, make appointments, or just deal with day-to-day communication needs. Williams says the phone is particularly important at night, when most others in the area are curfewed and will only dial 9-1-1.
That can be a pretty big problem if someone may need help, especially if someone like a sex worker for example isnt going to want to call 9-1-1 for help if theyre afraid of being criminalized, Williams points out. Other communities in Vancouver keep their phones on past 9pm; we feel like the Downtown Eastside should have equal access to communication tools.
Not surprisingly, the number of public payphones throughout the Lower Mainland has been on the decline for years. Shawn Hall, a spokesperson for Telus, says his company now operates about 4,000 payphones in the region, compared to 5,500 in 2008.
While cellphones have made payphones all but obsolete in certain areas, Hall says Telus tries to maintain them in low-income areas and around transit hubs. He says when phones are curfewed, its done at the request of landlords, business associations, the city or police who report phones being used for illegal activity or frequently vandalized.
What we typically try to do in that situation is work with the association to try to keep the phone and curfewing the phones is one of the solutions that weve had real success with, says Hall, who could not provide the exact number of payphones Telus operates in the Downtown Eastside. Hall says generally Telus only removes phones from properties where the landlords have specifically requested it, but they do proactively remove phones in areas where they are regularly targeted by vandals. It costs about $5,000 to replace a payphone, he adds. While the majority of Teluss payphones in Downtown Vancouver are curfewed, Hall says Telus is always happy to work with any group thats interested in that kind of project.
Back at Spartacus, Williams reports that so far, there have been no complaints to the store about calls made on the phone, or serious attempts at vandalism.
People really look out for each other in this community. If someone sees someone trying to destroy something thats useful to them, theyll stick up for it. And thats happened.
