Comment 2813

By jason (registered) | Posted January 02, 2007 at 21:19:55

great letter Ben. I never realized how I had instinctively grown up through my youth in the suburbs with a fear and 'disdain' for homeless types until moving into my downtown neighbourhood. I have completely fallen in love with (and now understand) my mixed income neighbourhood. When we first moved here it was kind of unnerving to see the few homeless guys trotting up York St everynight to sleep in Dundurn Park and then back down York towards downtown each morning. Then, there were the recycling guys - rummaging around for metal and other materials worth money. Recently my wife and I had a chat wondering, with concern, where the homeless guy 'with the big jacket' has been. We hadn't seen him in months. Thankfully he is ok and showed up again recently...last Easter I took him out a warm hot-cross bun when I saw him sitting in a bustop trying to stay warm and dry. Now I put my recycling out early enough in the evening, as most of our neighbourhood does, to allow the hard working entrepeneurs to come by and search for their income. I have more appreciation and respect for these folks....through bad circumstances, choices or addictions they have ended up with a sad lot in life....but they are still human beings, no worse and no better than you and I. If not for the grace of God, I could be plodding up and down York each day. We love living in a neighbourhood with $300,000 homes next to cheap apartments and drop in centres. Most of the neighbourhood falls in between those two extremes, and the balance seems to work just right. You hit the nail on the head - community. Jane Jacobs illustrates the beauty of community in Death and Life of Great American cities. Everyone should read it and we should strive to develop neighbourhoods with a strong sense of community.

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