Comment 33381

By rusty (registered) - website | Posted September 11, 2009 at 14:28:38

Great e-mail Meredith. Just to clarify my take on this: Even though it's a 'mixed' condo development proposal I think it's horrible. You can't, of course, force the owners to sit and wait for the hotel to be viable, but neither should the government be encouraging an excessive concentration of low income services and housing in one spot.

When I look around Sherbourne and Queen all the way up to Dundas (in Toronto) I despair. The damage done by constructing massive shelters and allowing all the corresponding social services to pool in the same area is massive. Quite simply it would take an enormous and impractical infill of higher end housing to off-set the current ghetto effect. If this gets approved in Hamilton it could set back the downtown recovery significantly. There's no pretty way to paint the picture - downtown doesn't need more poor people. It's as simple as that. We should also look at this from the vantage point of 'poor people' - it does low income folks no good to live in such areas. Healthy mixed neighbourhoods benefit everyone. Ghettos hurt everybody. Nobody will win with this proposal.

Cheers

Ben

Ben Bull. Cap'n Bully has a new Blog! http://bullysmoviereviews.blogspot.ca/ or something like that.

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