All services like this have moved 99% online. There are far less runaways, homeless and drug users making a living this way, which is a positive. It's also safer to be off the streets. There are definitely risks still involved, and most providers still rent space as opposed to using their own home, but it's definitely not what it used to be. And this trend started about 25 years ago with the start of the internet. Does anyone remember the website Hollywood North Escorts? Or Escorts Canada? Not even sure they still exist, but these were women that worked from home, or rental space. Now, it's become potentially incredibly lucrative for woman. Some make thousands a day on their OnlyFans accounts a do not even need to customers in person anymore. There are definitely pros and cons to technology and online services.
I'm pretty sure you're talking about different women than I am.
90% of the women who ever work the street on Hastings, are women who live in one of the many SRO buildings on Hastings; and who hang out out on the street on Hastings even when they're not "working", because that group of people is, basically, their community. These girls do mostly blow-and-go cardates, for just enough money to afford their next hit of their drug of choice; and so they never earn enough per month to afford a regular non-SRO place.
Most of these girls I'm talking about, they don't even have a phone, let alone a data plan. They could never make arrangements over the Internet. In person is the only way for them. (I should know: I often tried to get the phone numbers of the ones I liked, and it never worked. Even when they get a phone, they're always hawking it for drugs, or getting it stolen, or dropping it and breaking it when they nod off with it in their hand, etc.)
So, let me rephrase my observation like this:
There are just as many mature women (35+) living in the SROs on Hastings as there ever used to be, who turn to prostitution to feed their drug habit. (More, even; many cities in northern BC are depopulating, the social welfare programs in those places closing for lack of funding. The women abandoned by those programs mostly come here.)
But there are far fewer
young women living in those same SROs in the same situation. (Again, I should know: I often visit them in there and end up noticing who else lives there.)
There used to be the same number of younger women as older women in these buildings. So I wonder what has happened. The fact that there's always a new influx of 35+yo women would suggest that we're not doing any better at getting ladies out of drugs — there's no shortage of younger addicts "aging into" becoming those more-mature women working Hastings. But seemingly, they either just suddenly have decided to not come to Vancouver until they're older... which would be strange... or something happens to the ones who do.