Be A Tourist In Your Own Slum
Ever curious and desirous of being aware of my surroundings I googled ‘Main @ Hastings’. Apparently it’s the poorest postal code in Canada and Carnegie Community Centre used to be just a library built as a joint venture between the city and a philanthropist for $5,000 each per year and is now known as the area’s ‘living room’ and is allegedly drug-free.
I also stumbled upon a forum called Virtual Tourist in which visitors to our fair city were debating the merits of the area. In all but 2 posts it was usually condemned as “avoid at all costs” some because of unsubstantiated claims regarding crime but many reaching the common sense conclusion that it’d just be a downer on your vacation.
Of the 2 dissenting opinions one poster felt the need to explain how to score drugs without getting ripped off. His screen name was sickboi.
Apt, that.
The second dissenting opinion claimed the area a monument to the city’s poor handling of their poor and addicted.
Now I’m not saying the city’s approach is great as it’s clearly not working but when did it become the city’s fault that people were poor or on drugs?
(comic relief: when first typing this on my PDA while on the bus it came out as “when did it become the city’s fault that people were poo“. An attractive woman with red nails reading over my shoulder tried not to laugh lest she give away her nefarious reading - as a result the stifled giggles made her look like she was having a seizure. Good times.)
So I’m sure you’re all quick to ask “what about the mentally ill?” Well it was PROVINCIAL funding cutbacks that downscaled Riverview.
Or perhaps you’re thinking, “what about those addicted to drugs, it’s not their fault?” I beg to differ on two counts. One, at some point, assuming they weren’t all crack babies, they made a choice in favour of drugs. Two, how is this the city’s fault. “Oh the city doesn’t do enough to help addicts“? The city had the only supervised injection site in the country, I daresay the city may have done too much to help them but that’s a debate for another time and before you summon the riteous indignation I haven’t decided how I feel about that whole idea yet.
What about the poor? Our economy’s booming. An idiot can get a job. Employers are too desperate to marginalize anyone. Employees are a resource in scarce supply right now so they can call the shots more than ever before.
There’s plenty of blame to spread around but the recent trend to lay it all on the city is ill-conceived.
