iaink

Victoria is the capital of BC isnt it, not some hokey 2 horse town?

If I was homeless in Canada I too would head for somewhere with the mildest climate... Really the only thing stopping many people from moving to Victoria is the employment prospects vs the cost of property there, if you are homeless that not really an issue...

JonboyE

I don't think that really holds up. In this article (it is the Guardian so it must be right) http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/20...-homeless-rise there were 4,672 rough sleepers counted in London in one night. This was 2009 but I can't think it has got any better.

This report on Vancouver http://www.metrovancouver.org/planni...se%20FINAL.pdf states the number of rough sleepers counted in Vancouver as 731.

Granted that London is a bigger metropolitan area than Vancouver, but at about 8 million people to 2.5 million people I don't see how you can claim Vancouver has a huge homeless population compared to London. If Vancouver had an equal proportion of rough sleepers as London you would have expected about 1,450 to be found. Double the actual number.

dbd33

I don't believe I did claim that. One thinks of Vancouver as having a lot of homeless beggars, just as one thinks of it as being rainy, but that may just be the image of the place; something brought about by advertising and promotion.

Toronto vs. London, no contest, lots of natives in Toronto.

Tangram

BC advertises for, and promotes, homeless people now ?

dbd33

Who knows. I suppose I should go and look but even with a graduation to attend I'm not inspired to visit.

"Compared to London, Toronto does have a huge homeless population, many of them deranged. So too does Vancouver"

I suppose the issue here is whether or not the full stop after deranged ends the comparison with London. I wouldn't for a moment compare Vancouver and London and am a bit startled that anyone would.

lmartin999

Something else to improve the quality of life in Toronto:

http://www.thestar.com/news/transpor...d-transit?bn=1

Just depressing.

London Mike

I'm curious. Toronto's deficit is supposedly $750m or something like that. How does that compare with cities of the same size in the western world? Natch, it's wise to clear one's debts but over a manageable period of time. What's Vancouver's status?

Just wondering how much in the shithole TO is, supposedly, from a financial perspective.

JamesM

On a positive note my company is relocating. I will now be able to see my office from my Condo window. An 8 minute walk with the new bridge from Fort York to Front.

Add this to the bar on my ground floor and I have worked out that during the winter I will be able to venture outside just 16 minutes a day and never have to leave the same two blocks all season should I choose.

I truly believe it would have been difficult to foster this life style in many other cities.

jandro

The number of rough sleepers appears to have gone way up in London and down in Vancouver. However the number of people using emergency shelters in Vancouver has gone up apparently.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Num...515/story.html

lmartin999

B'strd. I meanwhile am finally giving in and despite paying a premium to live one min from a subway station am going to start driving to work as the bus part of my journey is just so bad.

As for the deficit, if Ford had not cancelled the vehicle registration tax and not gone for a 0% property tax increase there wouldn't be a problem.

MarylandNed

There are a few factors. There's a global recession and so government revenues are down. The world is becoming more urban. 100,000 people move into the Toronto region annually and so there is a greater demand for services - traffic congestion increases as does congestion on public transportation. In this respect, Toronto is no different than other major cities. I've lived in the Washington DC area for the past 13 years and I've experienced gradually increasing traffic congestion each year. Subway service has also deteriorated. You don't tend to notice from one year to the next but when viewed over multiple years, the changes are more obvious. And it's not just DC - I've noticed the same thing in other east coast cities e.g. Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.

I lived in Toronto 1989-1996. I still go back to visit fairly frequently (most recently in March this year) and there's no doubt that traffic and public transportation congestion has increased since I left in 1996. It doesn't help that the TTC (albeit under financial pressure) is proposing fare hikes, job losses and increased wait times. Toronto also does not have the infrastructure (including a subway system) that is adequate for a city of its size and growth rate. Consider that Washington DC has 86 subway stations on 106 miles of track. I would expect Toronto to beat those numbers - yet it has only 69 stations on only 43 miles of track! That's just not good enough.

There have been years of underinvestment by all levels of government - city, provincial and federal. It's now time to start trying to catch up or things will just continue to get worse.

dbd33

We've been downtown the past two evenings. Toronto seems unchanged. Bank still inefficient. Beach still polluted. Traffic still terrible. Food still wonderful.

MarylandNed

The beaches have improved dramatically over recent years and are cleaner and safer than many more popular spots.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/...oronto-beaches

dbd33

So I've been reading since I've arrived. There is, however, still a stready trickle of raw sewage flowing into the lake. The dog still gets sick if he swims in the water and I still see plenty of rubbish. The beaches must have been awful in the seventies.

humanist

Couldn't agree with this more! I commuted using the Northern line for 10 years, now I take the University Line & Bloor Line in Toronto and the subway system here is soooo much better.

I always get a seat and it's air conditioned, in London I was usually pressed up against a bunch of sweaty people for half an hour before getting to work.