Zurich to open drive-in prostitition boxes

[Democracyinkind]

21. Further information...

We voted on this back in March... It was 52.6% yes to 47.4%. About 40% of eligible voters cast their ballots. This measure came before the people because our local version of the Republicans, the SVP, couldn't fathom that the city council was "openly promoting prostitution" (although it's a legal trade here).

Unsurprisingly, the people that actually live in the part of town where it will be built rejected the proposition (64% no, 36% yes).

The area were this is going to be implemented is right next to the train tracks, rather at the outskirts of Zurich.

This is not a definitive project. They're going to build something there, sooner or later. The project, as voted on, is meant to last for 10 years. Then the city will assess what effect it had and consider installing a long-term version somewhere else.

I couldn't find the cost of it all just now, but the City believes that it will be paying about 550'000 Swiss francs a year (exchange rate more or less 1:1 nowadays) to maintain it (counselors for the sex workers, security, repairs, clean up).

The whole measure was put on the ballot because on-street sex working has become rampant within 3 parts of the city due to our new arrangement with the EU (Switzerland is not a member), which allows any EU citizen to come to Switzerland to work. The women that sell themselves on the street are predominantly from eastern Europe (Romania and Hungary) and are almost exclusively gypsies (german: Roma, I don't know the PC word in english) in their ethnic makeup. The situation as it is now (pre-boxes) has the city in a furor, and that was the primary motivation to get this project running.

Cities in the Netherlands (Utrecht) and Germany ( Essen, Cologne) have been the pioneers of this, and that's where the idea came from.

Local sex-worker advocates are supportive of the whole measure, but they insist that these boxes are not ideal for every kind of sex worker and they have urged the police to not ramp up actions against those sex workers who want to (or have to) keep working the streets.