Comment 37350

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted January 24, 2010 at 19:03:22

Poor people haven't ruined downtown, poorbashing has. I spend a LOT of time downtown, and know a very good number of the homeless and panhandling folks. There are, at most, a dozen people panhandling in the core at any one time on most days, usually far less. Compare that with the thousands of people who work downtown, and thousands more who pass through, shop or eat. We really don't have a problem that compares to Toronto or other major urban centres. It's simply in our faces because panhandlers have to be to make any money.

What there's far more of, are people who have committed no crime other than looking unpleasant. Some are poor, others are ethnic, elderly, disabled, drunk or have fashion senses outside the mainstream. How far are we going to go to placate bigoted suburbanites? No swearing? No oversized sports gear or green hair? Nobody from the group homes? Nobody with mental illness problems? Perhaps we could have the Hamilton cops start doing drop-offs like on the pararies?

Human rights are human rights. Even when you're dirty, drunken and foul-mouthed.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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