Shittiest neighborhood in your city

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by esquire

It was kind of jarring when homeless people started to become much more prominent during the early 90s during the recession era... now we have kind of moved into a phase where over the last decade or so we've seen the social fabric of inner cities deteriorating as addictions and mental health issues exacerbate the pre-existing economic difficulties.

In short, the grittier parts of Canada's cities have become decidedly grittier over the last decade or so. A few parts in each city have become gentrified, but many others have gotten worse. As you pointed out, the kind of really down at the heels areas you used to only see in the US have now become common in Canada even if it still isn't quite as widespread here.

Yippers.

At least so far, the Great Canadian Social Safety Net has kept much of the edge off the usual proximity issues between the affluent and non-affluent, and if anything it's the opposite of affluence flight and exodus that we've been seeing in most cities I'd argue - well-off people continue to move into inner cities in greater numbers.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Most of downtown Kitchener is a dump.

Funny you say that. Last weekend my wife and I had sushi across from city hall, and during the half hour we waited outside the restaurant numerous young couples pushing baby strollers passed by us on the sidewalk.

Numerous enough that we couldn't help but notice and remark on it. Were they out for a walk from a house or condo nearby? Had they driven in, parked their car, and were proceeding to a restaurant? Either way, I don't think you can overstate the significance of their presence in such numbers.

By contrast, we only saw one strung-out homeless guy in the whole half-hour we were there. I'm not saying that K-W isn't aesthetically ugly, because it is, but it's getting a modern makeover, and that seems to be bringing residents closer to King St., be it the north, south, east or west part of it (this geographic quirkiness being a unique feature of the street as it courses through K-W).

[MolsonExport]

Density map of human excrement on the streets, San Francisco. That brown pile represents the infamous "Tenderloin" and environs.

fast company

it is getting worse, like others have insinuated on this thread:

[Sphincter]

For Ottawa it’s basically anything on the quebec side

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by esquire

It was kind of jarring when homeless people started to become much more prominent during the early 90s during the recession era... now we have kind of moved into a phase where over the last decade or so we've seen the social fabric of inner cities deteriorating as addictions and mental health issues exacerbate the pre-existing economic difficulties.

In short, the grittier parts of Canada's cities have become decidedly grittier over the last decade or so. A few parts in each city have become gentrified, but many others have gotten worse. As you pointed out, the kind of really down at the heels areas you used to only see in the US have now become common in Canada even if it still isn't quite as widespread here.

It's hard to say.

I live in Sudbury and an area of the city that used to be synonymous with 'dump' in the 1990s has kind of come around. The Donovan (near Kathleen and Frood Rd.) - previously a place one could pick up a house for less than the price of a new car - has actually turned around quite markedly in the last decade or so.

Instead of prostitutes, an old-school hotel bar and a sketchy KFC, it's now got a decent Italian place, a hipster-ish vegan taco place and a coffee bar. Sitting on the patio of the taco place one spring day, I was almost in awe of the number of young couples with kids trundling along for a nice walk. It's a far cry from the crowd before.

Which is nice and great for that part of town. However, what the housing boom has done has essentially pushed anyone who was on the margins out of shelter as slumlords has sold their property for hugely more than they acquired it for. Why rent to a tweaker when you can sell to a young couple for far more?

So, yeah, the mental health/addiction crowd ends up on the street and is much more visible because the bottom rung of housing essentially disappeared. Those $40k-60k slum houses are gone because that stock got hoovered up by people who couldn't afford something newer built in a better part of town. With the closing of institutions during budget cuts in the 1990s, those people got dumped on the streets. They're now getting evicted from the cheap housing that's climbing in value.

Aside: I notice that the mental health/addiction crowd is mostly white men here disproportionately (this is an anecdotal observation, so YMMV). It makes sense given our demographics, but I'm wondering if there's something that lends itself to that. Do other cultures have a better habit of keeping people from falling through the cracks? Do women have better support networks? Is our culture of 'independentness' just too hostile to those who can't work in our society?

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Yippers.

At least so far, the Great Canadian Social Safety Net has kept much of the edge off the usual proximity issues between the affluent and non-affluent, and if anything it's the opposite of affluence flight and exodus that we've been seeing in most cities I'd argue - well-off people continue to move into inner cities in greater numbers.

I think there's still a difference between destitution in Canada and destitution in the US.

In Canada, the people who live in tents in city parks are mentally ill or have addiction issues. Some of it - maybe a lot of it - might be spurred on by poverty, but people who are mentally 'stable' (for lack of a nicer word), or people who don't use the money they're given to feed an addiction are generally under a heated roof, no matter how bad that living situation might be.

In the US, a lot more people who live in tents under the interstate or crowd their families into different shelters every night are among the working poor that are gainfully employed in actual jobs. In the US, many of those tent cities are shantytowns in the developing world sense by anything but name.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

In Canada, the people who live in tents in city parks are mentally ill or have addiction issues. Some of it - maybe a lot of it - might be spurred on by poverty, but people who are mentally 'stable' (for lack of a nicer word), or people who don't use the money they're given to feed an addiction are generally under a heated roof, no matter how bad that living situation might be.

Lately this is a matter of debate with some people arguing they're completely functional but don't have enough income to rent any apartment in the city (maybe partly due to not being able to live with roommates, or getting into some bad feedback loop where they lose their job and apartment and are stuck). I'm not sure where the truth is.

I think it's somewhat of a red herring since the phenomenon of people needing to spend lots of money to feed addictions is a result of the policies we have in place, not the inherent resource intensiveness of making and distributing drugs. Nor are people necessarily non-functional when taking drugs.

One thing I notice that is a little bit suspicious about some of the homelessness debate is how the tents and shacks are sometimes built in the most prominent and even upscale downtown areas. But if you really want the cheapest housing in many Canadian cities you head out to a suburb or rural area. I don't think the housing or affordability concerns are fake but this points to a performative aspect.

I think the elephant in the room is that a lot of people (1-3 quintiles of the population) have a low standard of living in North America and it's moving in the wrong direction. Housing costs are going up but real incomes are not. We can debate about addictions and mental health but that income problem is a big one by itself regardless of the other ones. And I am not sure North American elites really "get it".

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Density map of human excrement on the streets, San Francisco. That brown pile represents the infamous "Tenderloin" and environs.

I guess this is the absolute sine qua non definition of a "shitty neighbourhood"

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by someone123

One thing I notice that is a little bit suspicious about some of the homelessness debate is how the tents and shacks are sometimes built in the most prominent and even upscale downtown areas. But if you really want the cheapest housing in many Canadian cities you head out to a suburb or rural area. I don't think the housing or affordability concerns are fake but this points to a performative aspect.

People build tents and shacks because they need to stay somewhere. Don't think they're considering average home prices when they're setting up.

They're in downtown areas because they have better access to essential services for the unhoused and for the mentally ill - namely addiction health centres. That, combined with the sheer number of people in proximity, makes things like begging more profitable. Downtown cores are better for the unhoused because, perhaps counterintuitively, fewer people bother them.

Imagine being unhoused on Queen East, for example, where you're near to mental health services and kitchens, and then imagine trying to be unhoused on Hurontario in Mississauga or Dundas in Oakville. There's a stark difference in what's available to you on foot.

This same sort of discussion comes up every now and then in the states when conservatives love to point out that blue states have worse problems with the unhoused and needy, disregarding the fact that those people would be more likely to die or be disregarded by services if they had remained in red states. Blue states are likely better for you if you're unhoused and needy, just as Canadian downtowns are better for you than your car-oriented suburbs. Suburbs, by their very design, are intended to exclude those that can't afford to live in them, either through housing or through means of transportation. Their inherent design is why I listed some of them as being 'shitty' [sic] on the first page of this thread. They're built to exclude.

[esquire]

One thing I have noticed in particular since the pandemic began is a significant increase in the number of homeless/destitute people outside of the central part of Winnipeg. The whole living in a tent or under a bridge thing used to be a fairly common sight in downtown and surrounding inner city neighbourhoods, but now it has spread to suburbia. In some respects, I can understand the appeal... even though there are fewer services around to help people in need, there are also fewer people around to bother you too. Suburban streets are much calmer and quieter.

I'm not sure if this is going on in other Canadian cities but it is very much a new thing to my eyes. The trend is moving in a pretty ominous direction.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by JHikka

People build tents and shacks because they need to stay somewhere. Don't think they're considering average home prices when they're setting up.

The example I had in mind was the temporary shelters constructed in front of the old library in Halifax. This would be comparable to building some shacks in/near Yonge-Dundas or Robson Square.

My impression is these were built not so much by homeless people but by activists/advocates/volunteers. I am skeptical that they had no political aims with this. The shelters are now gone, so if the goal was to provide housing it was a failure. We may think it was good or bad and the city was justified or unjustified independently of the question of how and why the various camps and huts are set up.

Beyond this I don't think we can usefully define homelessness as anybody choosing to live in a tent or small hut if they're allowed to set up wherever they want. Particularly when people do this seasonally.

[esquire]

^ It's interesting to see how the politics surrounding that issue have changed. 15 years ago I don't think there would have been much hesitation in removing those types of "for show" encampments. The approach is much different today.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by someone123

Lately this is a matter of debate with some people arguing they're completely functional but don't have enough income to rent any apartment in the city (maybe partly due to not being able to live with roommates, or getting into some bad feedback loop where they lose their job and apartment and are stuck). I'm not sure where the truth is.

Unfortunately, all we really have to go on are anecdotes. By its nature, data on homelessness as a macro phenomenon is masked by thousands of micro decisions largely guided by the fact that, for people who are mentally sound, not having a home is one of the most undignified shames you can have in life. To avoid true homelessness, people will move in with their families, move in with an abusive boyfriend, couchsurf at a friend's house...it's hard to know what the true scale of housing precarity really is because a lot of it won't show up in the stats.

I think the elephant in the room is that a lot of people (1-3 quintiles of the population) have a low standard of living in North America and it's moving in the wrong direction. Housing costs are going up but real incomes are not. We can debate about addictions and mental health but that income problem is a big one by itself regardless of the other ones. And I am not sure North American elites really "get it".

I think this is true, and I think it's true in both traditionally expensive cities and cities where homes cost $50,000. We all know the problem in the Vancouvers, Torontos and San Franciscos. But inner city Detroit and St. Louis have housing issues too, particularly among the bottom quintile, where there is housing, but it is in very poor condition with almost no incentives for landlords to make upgrades, or for new landlords to bother getting into the market.

On this forum, we tend to think of housing as a problem of land costs and regulation - both in terms of what can be built and the costs slapped by municipalities on those who actually get around to building things. But even if we take those things out of the equation, just building a structure doesn't make it affordable to many people. Let's say it costs $200/ft2 to just build a home in labour and materials. So a 1,000ft2 simple bungalow, similar to those simple bungalows that were cranked out by the millions after the War would cost $200,000 independent of the costs of land and servicing. When I was a kid, when incomes were probably 60% of what they are now, $200,000 was considered to be the price of a typical home in suburban Toronto.

As much as we have to deal with regulation and NIMBYism, we also have to deal with how we build homes. Why is it that every other consumer good has become cheaper and more durable, but we still build homes by hand in a year-long labour intensive process like we have for hundreds of years?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

As much as we have to deal with regulation and NIMBYism, we also have to deal with how we build homes. Why is it that every other consumer good has become cheaper and more durable, but we still build homes by hand in a year-long labour intensive process like we have for hundreds of years?

A lot of this seems to be regulation too. I think the bottleneck isn't at the technological development phase but somewhere in the deployment phase. And my impression is a big part of the problem is that our cities are inflexible so they can't adapt such that they can be expanded in a way best suited to our current technology (we ask "how can our technology help us do the old stuff better?", not "how would we build new cities from the ground up to best take advantage of new tech?"). We see this again and again like with covid where we basically have a 1980's approach in a bunch of areas (coupled with 2020's risk aversion and some bright spots where high tech work can be done in a lab and an easily-deployed-with-low-tech output can be shipped around).

The biggest cost of suburbia may not be in its own infrastructure but in how far away it has pushed greenfield sites from the core. If you want to build a new district for Toronto from the ground up you need a brownfield site or you need to go 20-30 km away through an inflexible band of mostly suburban development with not so great transportation infrastructure and built in car dependency. We can't really build the newer better equivalent of the 1950's and 60's housing projects.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by esquire

One thing I have noticed in particular since the pandemic began is a significant increase in the number of homeless/destitute people outside of the central part of Winnipeg. The whole living in a tent or under a bridge thing used to be a fairly common sight in downtown and surrounding inner city neighbourhoods, but now it has spread to suburbia. In some respects, I can understand the appeal... even though there are fewer services around to help people in need, there are also fewer people around to bother you too. Suburban streets are much calmer and quieter.

I'm not sure if this is going on in other Canadian cities but it is very much a new thing to my eyes. The trend is moving in a pretty ominous direction.

I have definitely noticed this as well in both Gatineau and Ottawa.

We definitely had rough-looking people roaming around in depressed areas that used to be the downtowns of former ''cities'' like Gatineau ''Mills'' and Vanier, but now there is vagrancy into a much wider range of areas.

Not necessarily in my immediate neighbourhood but now there are regularly beggars at suburban intersections maybe 1-2 km from my place.

Word on the street is that it's a coordinated effort, and that a man in a van actually drops people off in the morning and picks them up in the late afternoon.

Yes, it's not as bad as in the US, but as things get slowly but surely worse in our cities I am getting less and comforted by this classic Canadian justification, that we hear for a whole bunch of things.

[yaletown_fella]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I think there's still a difference between destitution in Canada and destitution in the US.

In Canada, the people who live in tents in city parks are mentally ill or have addiction issues. Some of it - maybe a lot of it - might be spurred on by poverty, but people who are mentally 'stable' (for lack of a nicer word), or people who don't use the money they're given to feed an addiction are generally under a heated roof, no matter how bad that living situation might be.

In the US, a lot more people who live in tents under the interstate or crowd their families into different shelters every night are among the working poor that are gainfully employed in actual jobs. In the US, many of those tent cities are shantytowns in the developing world sense by anything but name.

That's true. Usually people who are economically homeless have to live with roommates in a boarding house with a shared kitchen and bath, which isnt an fun experience. A shared living situation might be palatable for a temporary period of time if you are living with close trusted friends or if you have your own bathroom off your room and just share the kitchen facilities.

I'd argue the idea of saving money by gallivanting around as a nomad living out of a car is ultimately a fallacy. There would be a huge financial drain spent eating out at restaurants, fast food joints, and prepared grocery store meals at least twice a day. You'd likely be spending $800 a month just on food, water and snacks to keep you satiated. Not to mention the cost of gas youd be draining by constantly moving around to avoid the prying eyes of the security personnel or public. What if a bunch of transients come at night and knock on your window? It seems like a very stressful lifestyle.

You'd also be spending a lot of time driving around going to laundromats and gyms. You'd be relying on a paid gym membership to shower and use the washroom. If another pandemic lockdown were to hit, you'd have nowhere you knew you could depend on to shower or use the washroom.

I wouldnt be suprised if it's more expensive to live out of your car in Toronto, than it is to rent a small self contained bachelor basement apartment in Scarborough.

[MolsonExport]

not to mention, having to run your car on the hot/cold days for AC/heating.
Living out of a car would be fucking horrible.

[urbandreamer]

Living out of a car would be awesome. Although I would prefer a small van like the Nissan NV200 or Transit Connect. I'm looking into converting a small van to do just that sometime in the next few years. A portable shower, small onboard battery, propane stove, possibly solar roof, lightweight sofa/bed, 3-4 storage totes, chemical bucket toilet and small fridge/freezer is about all you need - I'm an extreme minimalist so am fine showering every 3 days (better for your skin), I know how to cook/eat healthy on a tight budget. Essentially #VanLife but without the instagram bs.

Rousseau, I'm going to double down on (greater downtown) Kitchener: total shithole. Now that I've been to every city and town with a population of at least 5000 in Ontario, I can confidently say downtown Kitchener is the most puzzling dump of them all. It's within 80 minutes of Toronto, has many wealthy tech bros and industry, Google campus and GO station, 2 miles from two large universities, close to the 401, large immigration/population growth - yet remains a downtrodden backwards place where parking lots, cars, wreckless disregard for its heritage buildings, (replaced with ugly new buildings or parking lots) and the homeless/extreme poor have near total control of the urban streetscape. I dare you to spend 24 hours in downtown Kitchener to find out the truth. (I've been to your town at all hours of the day and night, throughout the year: charming in the summer by day; by night it's dead and depressingly insular.)

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by esquire

One thing I have noticed in particular since the pandemic began is a significant increase in the number of homeless/destitute people outside of the central part of Winnipeg. The whole living in a tent or under a bridge thing used to be a fairly common sight in downtown and surrounding inner city neighbourhoods, but now it has spread to suburbia. In some respects, I can understand the appeal... even though there are fewer services around to help people in need, there are also fewer people around to bother you too. Suburban streets are much calmer and quieter.

I'm not sure if this is going on in other Canadian cities but it is very much a new thing to my eyes. The trend is moving in a pretty ominous direction.

I've noticed the same thing in Timmins as well. I've seen tents in parks and in the bush within our city and in places that are quite far from downtown. From my observations it seems that the people doing that tend to not want to be around others doing the same thing in order to protect themselves. The pandemic has given them an acceptable excuse to choose to be away from downtown.

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Living out of a car would be awesome. Although I would prefer a small van like the Nissan NV200 or Transit Connect. I'm looking into converting a small van to do just that sometime in the next few years. A portable shower, small onboard battery, propane stove, possibly solar roof, lightweight sofa/bed, 3-4 storage totes, chemical bucket toilet and small fridge/freezer is about all you need - I'm an extreme minimalist so am fine showering every 3 days (better for your skin), I know how to cook/eat healthy on a tight budget. Essentially #VanLife but without the instagram bs.

Rousseau, I'm going to double down on (greater downtown) Kitchener: total shithole. Now that I've been to every city and town with a population of at least 5000 in Ontario, I can confidently say downtown Kitchener is the most puzzling dump of them all. It's within 80 minutes of Toronto, has many wealthy tech bros and industry, Google campus and GO station, 2 miles from two large universities, close to the 401, large immigration/population growth - yet remains a downtrodden backwards place where parking lots, cars, wreckless disregard for its heritage buildings, (replaced with ugly new buildings or parking lots) and the homeless/extreme poor have near total control of the urban streetscape. I dare you to spend 24 hours in downtown Kitchener to find out the truth. (I've been to your town at all hours of the day and night, throughout the year: charming in the summer by day; by night it's dead and depressingly insular.)

I lived at Lancaster and Brubaker Streets back in 2016 for 6 months after going to UW for 5 years and I don't agree that it's a 'total shithole' If anything, Downtown Kitch is gritty, but definitely on the upswing lately.

Also, if anyone else happens to be in DTK looking for food, I do recommend the Kinkaku Izakaya sushi that Rousseau enjoyed (how can you say no to AYCE creme brulee?).