Partial transcript of interview:
Q: Can you tell me a little about the Downtown Eastside?
KO: The Downtown Eastside is the area east of Yonge St. But for those of us in the neighbourhood, we think of it primarily as three neighbourhoods east of Yonge, so St. Jamestown, Regent Park, and Moss Park.
One of the focus for us the Sherbourne and Dundas area. It’s an area of our community that has been impacted by cuts and systemic issues. It’s really a diverse and broad community as far as who lives in the community. There has been a lot of gentrification over the years, but there are still many people who live in poverty.
Particularly with Regent Park and St. Jamestown, there are a lot of newcomers that are in those communities. Obviously affected by the propose cuts and the gentrification.
Q: What are some of the issues you are working on in your neighbourhood?
KO: Those of that are already active in our community had some sense of the issue that we have seen around housing, around access to services, and childcare. But we didn’t want to assume based on what we experienced. So we held a broader community meeting back in July.
We had close to 90 people in that community attend. We identify priorities to work on. One of that was housing and the potential sell-off of housing. User fees at the community rec centre was another key issue because our neighbourhoods have been identified as priority neighbourhoods.
There had already been a cap put on the welcome policy so people weren’t able to access the rec programs through that access programs. In addition, there were talking about implementing user fees and that had done that at some of the community centres that provide services in the neighbourhood like the Wellesley community centre.
The third area that people talked about was around child care. Many of our community members rely on subsidized child care. We were going to see a potential loss of 2000 child care spaces.
The fourth one was shelters and access to shelters. There are a number of shelters in the community and we had concerns about those being pushed out and closed without actual housing being implemented prior.
Q: How many people are in your committee?
KO: We have a core group of about ten people that come to every meeting. We meet every two weeks; that’s a pretty decent number involved on an on-going basis. But we also have up to at least 20 people that are actively involved that will take on tasks like doing outreach or doing flyering in the community and to talk about issues that are coming up. As well, we have close to 200 people on our listserv and outreach list and who will come out and more specifically to do actions, activities or events that we hold.
Q: Can you tell me the impact gentrification is having in your neighbourhood?
KO: Services that provide programs to people who are poor or who are newcomers are targeted. There hasn’t been a decrease in the number of people living in poverty in our community. But has happen because of condo development is that there has been an increase in the number of people that have privilege that live in the community.
This concept of a mixed community being so healthy is completely false. Because what happens is people with privilege, they, not to stereotype them all, I’m sure some folks are open to a ‘mixed neighbourhood’, but it’s the people with privilege who move into the community who then don’t feel comfortable with the reality of the community is that poverty exists, there are issues that arise and they want to see those things changed in the community.
They want to see things even further gentrified that there aren’t poor people that they have to see, that there aren’t people on the corner asking for change because they don’t have enough money to survive. They want poor people to be gone from their community. You have really mobilized residents associations, but they generally tend to be homeowners and they will tend to mobilize with the support of police to target the community.
Recently we had around the Sherbourne and Dundas area, there was going to be a methadone clinic opening up and that created the galvanization of the homeowners who then working with city councillor to force the person leasing the space to rescind the lease so that did not open. That means people who are struggling dealing with substance abuse issues aren’t going to be able to access a resource that is needed simply because other people don’t want it in their ‘neighbourhood.’
We’ve seen services targeted. We’ve seen pressure on organizations that provide services to control it to limit their hours of operations so that it doesn’t interfere with the homeowners. So there’s ongoing tensions. It even comes out to basic things like where people can gather and spend time together.
There was a situation at Parliament and Winchester which is just north of Regent Park. There was a new Tim Horton’s developed there that tends to be a bit more upscale and geared towards the homeowners, but across the street was a coffee time where it was for poor and low-income people would hang out. The homeowners became very upset that poor people were simply outside talking and gathering together. They stereotyped it and said there was drug dealing going on and all these things that weren’t actually happening and they gathered together and targeted people simply gathering on a corner on a beautiful summer day and tried to stop them from doing that. The Tim Horton’s supported this effort and they’ve actually got signs outside warning about not trespassing and not gathering from so many feet of the premises.
There’s clear targeting and mobilization that happens amongst people that have moved into the community that do have privilege that want to see a community that only reflect themselves.
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