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Originally Posted by hamilton23
We can agree to disagree. I don't disagree about the factories being a factor for people forming a stigma when driving by Hamilton, but a lot of people actually come into the city for visits and have formed their opinions based on several other factors besides the factories. I agree that they do play a factor, but you also can't say that factories are the one and only factor for the negative stigma many people still have of our city. It's just not the case.
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We can indeed. And I agree that the people who DO go through the city have as you said formed their opinions based on other things and thus are improving their opinion based on seeing improvements - so we can both be right
As for the poor - we have to tackle what makes them poor, and address that
a) drugs - there is no pure determiner as to what motivates people to go on drugs, as even those with the best family upbringings can degenerate along that line.
b) disability - whether health mental or accident related
c) conning the system - generations of welfare bums
d) thrown out of their housing
e) people who are too poor to get a proper education, or aren't smart enough or have a learning disability - refer to b
f) people who simply don't want to work - this can tie into any of the above. There isn't much one can do about these people.
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"Being poor" is a complex issue and obv. there is no clear cut solution. I get the argument that with higher salary people moving into the city the market increases and cost of living increases everywhere, in many cases to unsustainable rates. This only becomes an issue when the jobs provided within the city do not match the rates offered - aka the people can't afford through their work to live in the city. I think that is probably a bigger issue than providing affordable housing - ergo providing affordable jobs to sustain the prices of living in the city - and this is being fed by those who have higher paying jobs outside of the city moving here to commute.
It's a bit of a process - first you have to provide the condos for those higher paying users to live in, then you have to provide the infrastructure to either ferry them from one location to another, or centralize the communities so jobs and living conditions are in the same place, and then you have to provide the jobs here for those higher paying users to actually work at to convince them to not find jobs in toronto. THEN, when those jobs are available, work on increasing the quality of life for the poor for also offering them higher paying jobs within the city.
Ideally condos would have the jobs below and the people working in those jobs living above. Kinda like the old days with the ma and pop shops where they lived upstairs and ran their business downstairs. Then you'd eliminate transportation needs. You'd have amenities for them either in the same building or close by forming community blocks. This is easier said than done though, and a detriment of this can be silo communities where nobody wants to travel anywhere within the city. Thus a better solution is for all community amenities that can't be found elsewhere in the city to be in the core and to motivate people to travel down there for big events - festivals theaters entertainment etc, while providing local amenities grocery stores clothes shopping coffee shops etc somewhat nearby.
A lot of the issues above all stem from the inability to find high enough paying work.
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People become depressed at their harsh existence and turn to drugs for solace or for an easy way to make cash by selling it. Or they work multiple jobs and ruin their health, or they expose themselves to chemicals doing dangerous jobs that pay high but are high risk. People become disillusioned with working if no amt of working is going to give them a comfortable existence, and if they can just con the system and live off welfare, which creates slums which drives middle class people out thus increasing the slums, and this forms generational welfare families that simply don't want to work.
So providing seas of "affordable housing" (aka lower value housing) is just going to create slum communities - we need to make the condos be affordable by providing jobs that make them affordable - the real issue here is providing these people with meaningful employment, otherwise you simply enable the poverty and wrap it in a band-aid. Look at the richer cities around us. They have less poverty because they have better jobs, and better opportunities for jobs. I am not saying affordable housing is bad in theory - but the reason it is needed is the problem. Obv. we need it for now until we can directly address the poverty problem itself.
Provide the schooling, the post secondary education incentive, where the things they take in school will actually lead to jobs they can find within the city that pay enough to allow them to live here comfortably, and you will find the drugs decrease, the poverty decreases, and the types of people you see here improve. People want better opportunities, because a lot of people have simply given up on life.
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We lost a lot of our industry and centralized core living when those businesses moved away/went out of business/were bought out, and when the core suburbanized and local ma and pa shops/small theatres were replaced by malls/big box stores and theatres. We need to figure out what to replace it with that adheres to the above. Art does not put food on the table, and not everyone can afford (or is smart enough) to work in the medical field, of which hamilton thankfully has a large presence with mcmaster.
We need to think of what kind of businesses we WANT to put in these base condos that don't just focus on what it is people want to go to, but what will provide sustainable living wages for people who want to work in the core. Starbucks isn't going to pay you enough to live in these condos. Nor would a winners or home outfitters.
So lets brainstorm as to what pays high wages:
1) medical field - doctors nurses etc
2) government - city, lawyers, judges, banks, employment and civil services etc
3) builders - masons architects technologists planners etc
4) tech - software, hardware, apps, phones, programming, videogame production, graphic design, telecommunications etc
5) city-oriented: firefighters, police
6) manufacturing - factories, etc.
7) entertainment(sometimes) - film, recording, acting, music, radio, etc.
8) education - teachers, supervisers etc
9) food owners - restaurants, bakeries, etc
10) protection - military navy airforce etc
and of course all the higher levels of the above - managers, ceos supervisers, business owner, etc.
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and what DOESN'T pay high wages
1) cash loan places
2) coffee shops
3) retail (winners, urban outfitters, mall, etc)
4) fast food & food employees (restaurants, bakeries fast food etc)
5) gaming - working in arcades/gaming stores "gaming for a living" etc
6) repair shops - electronic, car, etc
Start to see the problem here? All the things that all of you find "convenient" to go to in a city core - restaurants, clothing stores, coffee shops, don't provide living wages to actually afford to live in the city close to those places in the core. Thus places need to be provided that allow for affordability within the downtown, much like it was in the old days, where the people who worked downtown lived downtown - where rent was much cheaper so you could work in a department store, or live close to the factories in which you worked. As it stands if you work in any of those places that provide you with all the conveniences you enjoy, you are doomed to a shitty sub-par life with a low income, living in a sketchy area of town or with multiple people so you can simply afford to pay the rent, or are forced to work 2 or 3 jobs to pay the bills.
Making "affordable housing" simply highlights the stark fact that most of what is in hamilton isn't "affordable" - I mean why do we have to charge so much for people to live down here? Living wages shouldn't be a constant ratio of what you make, because then people never can get ahead - living wages is always x% amt of whatever they make. Maybe there simply needs to be condo or rent living caps. Do you REALLY need to charge 2000 dollars a month for a 2 bedroom? It seems excessive. Sure you CAN but maybe you shouldn't be able to. Maybe the average wage of the citys job market (not of the wages of people living in the city, but of the jobs actually IN the city, to prevent people with say toronto job wages from inflating that) should be a determiner of how high rent prices can be in the city so that those who live in the city can match it. The only issue with that is that people in toronto would flock here and push everyone else out of the city.. buut .. they already do.
As I said, a complex issue.