Comment 53277

By Michelle Martin (registered) - website | Posted December 18, 2010 at 13:24:41

But it does mean that there's some people who have far less ability to speak up for themselves than you do, as well as to find housing. Living in the ghetto isn't a choice for everybody.

Of course it isn't. The answer is to work on giving them a voice, to look for ways to increase reasonably-priced rental stock, to look for ways to help people along to home ownership, to help people get off of welfare sooner by allowing them to actually save some money up for their future without penalizing them for it... Meanwhile, to have James St. looking nicer, with more possibilities for employment, is a small gain, but a gain nonetheless.

Thus we have incidents such as the redevelopment of the Royal Connaught, where several entitled downtown business owners were up in arms that it might be turned into mixed income housing.

I actually argued against that, not because I don't think poor people belong here, but because I think that we should be putting the mixed income housing in nicer places, and not across from the adult bookstore, the bingo hall and the payday loans place. If I was a single mom on a housing wait list, and that was the location that came up for me, I'd feel kind of hopeless, I think. Let's get it looking nicer down there, first.

Comment edited by Michelle Martin on 2010-12-18 12:49:07

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