Vancouver streets are full of so much human waste they need 'poop fairies' to clean it up

National Post

16-05-2025

Vancouver, renowned for its natural beauty and laid back lifestyle, has a human waste problem so bad that businesses have hired 'poop fairies' to speed the cleanup on city sidewalks.
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Dodging human and dog waste has become a real problem for pedestrians navigating the city's sidewalks, and it's not just a problem plaguing the Downtown Eastside. The city's own feces removal response program can't seem to keep up so business improvement districts have hired the 'poop fairies.'
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'Everybody down here feels that you end up walking in stuff no matter where you go. So, basically, it's getting tracked around,' said Dave Hamm, vice president of the Vancouver Network of Drug Users, which counts about 3,000 people in its membership.
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'What are you going to do? You give them their privacy,' Hamm said. 'It's in the alleys more than the sidewalk.'
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'It's one of the worst things down here that we have to put up with,' Hamm said of poop littering the ground.
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Vancouver launched its feces removal program four years ago 'to address feces complaints submitted through 311 and to proactively patrol and collect feces in the Downtown and Downtown Eastside areas of Vancouver,' Doug Thomas, who speaks for the city, said in an email.
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'The program is run by Mission Possible under the city's street cleaning grant program,' Thomas said.
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'Mission Possible staff collect feces for proper disposal and sanitize affected areas with a disinfectant spray. Collection takes place weekdays across five Business Improvement Areas: Chinatown, Downtown east of Burrard, Strathcona, Gastown, and Hastings Crossing.'
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'The issue is something we see throughout the downtown area,' said Walley Wargolet, executive director of the Gastown Business Improvement Society.
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Wargolet pegs a lot of the problem on 'folks not picking up after their dogs.'
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His business improvement area and the neighbouring one in Hastings Crossing are both providing free bags for dog poop as a trial.
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But he'd like to be able to test the collected feces to determine whether it came from a canine or human source. 'We're hoping someone will come up with an idea about that, because I'm sure that there's analysis that could be done.'
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There are some public restrooms available in his area for people struggling with homelessness. 'But maybe not enough,' Wargolet said. 'We also know that some folks are just really severely mentally ill who cannot take care of themselves even if there's washrooms close by. In some cases, we've seen this, where there are (public toilets) but they're still not using them.'
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The businesses have also hired Clean Start B.C., a non-profit social enterprise, which provides people, known as 'poop fairies,' to clean up the feces. 'We were Monday through Friday, but we moved that to Monday, Wednesday, Friday, just from a cost perspective,' Wargolet said, noting he's budgeted between $30,000 and $40,000 this year for the service.