It is a privileged notion to think that we can solve all of our problems by simply moving services out of the downtown core.
The troubled people and their problems were not born downtown. The troubled people and their problems have no connection to the downtown core, and never did. We shuffled the troubled people and their problems into the downtown core because we didn't care about the downtown core and we also didn't care about the troubled people. We subscribed to the privileged notion that our neighbourhoods and suburbs were more precious than downtown was, and thus we moved the troubled people away from their own homes, loved ones, and close acquaintances and into the downtown core.
When services are moved to areas that are difficult to access, people don’t or can’t use them. Bus transport is becoming more expensive, so location of services affects whether or not someone will take that step to get there.
We are in the midst of a housing crisis, so where would we even find room to relocate these facilities?
And would that not only serve to further the gentrification of the downtown so that no one can afford to live there anymore...
And now we're defending the selfish decision on the grounds of administrative convenience. Such compassion.
How about relocating to areas that are cheaper, safer, more familiar, and much closer to where the troubled people are actually from? Just a thought. Sell the downtown properties (the trend downtown is gentrification, right?), and use the profits to develop newer, better & smaller facilities in distributed locations much closer to the people who need them.
Stop forcing troubled people to come downtown. Centralization and concentration have no relevance to this mission. A huge mistake was made. Stop defending the mistake and begin rectifying it.
None of this can happen if we are hiding away the people that need these services the most. Instead, we are appeasing those privileged individuals who would rather sweep the reality of addiction under the rug for the sake of “Beautiful Victoria.”
How the heck would we be hiding people away if we allowed them to remain where they're from instead of ejecting them to some unfamiliar district many miles away or even many cities away?
We've been marginalizing, rejecting, and then banishing our supposed loved ones as a matter of course, and we've been dressing up this vile practice as if it were something commendable. Stop it. Stop doing it.
Downtown's residential revival has exposed the falsity of these supposedly humanitarian premises. Tensions are rising because downtown is fast becoming a neighbourhood. Hence, disingenuous people are preaching more urgently now, because if downtown becomes a neighbourhood like any other then why should downtown be expected to carry the burdens of all other neighbourhoods on its back? It wouldn't make any sense. If every other neighbourhood has a sacred right to dispose its problems elsewhere, then shouldn't downtown have the very same right?
What it boils down to is this: the hypocrites absolutely do not want the troubled people (family, friends, neighbours) and their issues to remain in their own neighbourhoods. Get lost. Go downtown, where you'll be out of my sight. (Note how that prideful Victorian adage re: "I never go downtown" seems much less endearing and much more contemptible when regarded in this light.)
We'll know the hypocrisy has ended when downtown has a few small services to serve its local residents only, and every other neighbourhood and municipality finally has the same.
Edited by aastra, 13 September 2019 - 09:37 AM.