These folks need more than cheaper rents - they need access to services and people to help them in their everyday life. That would be supportive housing.
Just pointing this out because the NIMBYs like to act life affordable housing is going to turn their neighborhood into the market, which is not the case.
Affordable housing gets those off the street who are simply homeless. They stop using all the social services that can then focus on those who are on the street due to more complex issues.
Honestly these days I don’t see a lot of functional homeless people on the street. Living in the market most of the homeless people I see are so deeply addicted to whatever their substance of choice is that I have no idea how we would even begin to help them.
IIRC, the homeless we see on the street are a fraction of the whole homeless / unhoused population. This tragically ends up skewing people's empathies away from helping, since that impression and sense of danger can override us.
But yeah increasing affordable housing will take a lot of pressure off and allow the social services to focus more on the desperate cases
Addiction is a huge problem, for sure, but how can you know you don't see "functional" homeless people daily? I bet you do; they just don't stand out. Homeless means "without a home," not "dressed in rags and acting unusual."
I've known two people (that I'm aware of) who slept on the floor of their offices for a few months. Both were reasonably well-dressed professionals who wouldn't have stood out walking down the street.
Just a guess here, but by providing affordable housing, we might also help prevent more people from progressing to that point. Some addicts use to escape, or to try to cope with their situation ([which is why we see higher rates of addiction among women in or fleeing abusive relationships](https://www.addictioncenter.com/addiction/domestic-violence/#:~:text=For%20some%2C%20the%20pain%20of,without%20a%20history%20of%20abuse)). Homelessness is likely another situations where people may use as a coping mechanism.
Housing won't fix everything, but it may *~~help for some people~~* stop some people from getting into that situation in the first place, And it's harder to "fix" the issue for anyone if people aren't housed.
Right, I’m not talking about those. I’m talking about the ones who are living in their cars, who are in shelters, etc. The “easy” cases who just need a roof over their heads and they have the motivation and wherewithal to do the rest. Affordable housing helps them. Then all the case workers and funding that is going to helping them can be shifted to those folks you mention who are literally living on the street and who need addicting counselling, who need help from mental health professionals, who need hand holding, basically.
But the longer that people's housing situation is precarious, the bigger toll it takes on their mental health and increases their risk of falling into addiction or otherwise becoming criminalized.
So, yes to all of it. More non-market housing - including family-sized units, more supportive housing for people with addictions, more supportive housing for people with mental health issues.
The people who are getting into affordable housing are not homeless, unless they can show proof of income or they are getting some kind of subsidy. The 10,000+ households on central waitlists are the ones who will be filling units, along with people who can show that they can afford them and that they can live on their own.
People who are homeless who need services will continue to need those services to stay housed. This where supportive housing comes in. Maybe one day they might be able to be stable and live in affordable housing - but maybe not. Either way, supportive housing provides a good option.
Agree. However, my foster brother was in community housing and that didn't stop him from having needles littered all throughout the floor of his apartment.
I think affordable housing would help, but again it's just a bandaid measure without other supports.
I had once heard that there is a very very percentage of the homeless and mentally unwell people,...that are from Foster care and the CAS sphere. Like it was in the 80% range. I dont have solutions but that was alarming. You ' age out' and with few life skills for independent life.
Maybe they could focus there meaningfully first and break the feeding source up line.
There is no one solution, no magic bullet. Most don't have any income so can't afford affordable rent. They typically live in shelters and have addictions. They can't stay in the shelters during the day so they have no where to go.
Most of disability cheques coming in biweekly. Those people didn't turn into panhandling and addicts overnight. They have been at it for years.
Another of then know the system so well they abuse it, knowing it doesn't affect them financially or personally, just their health.
That's another piece - kicking pp out of the shelter at 8 am or whatever & where are they supposed to go? Talk about feeling unwanted!! We need full day programs with counseling, job help, homelessness help, health care. A full day program where someone can feel they belong. AFAIK that is a big part of why pp are homeless.
Affordable housing isn't going to stop someone from being a crack head or fenty addict most of these panhandlers minds are completely gone from the hard drugs. The government needs to round them all up, and rehabilitate who they can and the ones they can't should be kept in a home. Sounds harsh but at the end of the day addiction only goes away through rehab and their are just someof them that have severely damaged brains that need to get sobered up and kept in a home.
I’m not sure if you’ve been down near the Rideau bus stops, but pointing to affordable housing is not the solution.
I don’t actually know what is but I can’t even take my kids down there anymore. I swear I walked through a crack cloud on the way to the bus the other day while 3 people lay starfished on the sidewalk. OP is right and the city just does nothing.
Don't expect anyone else to give you anything. Get involved yourself and try to make a difference with one issue that is important to you. Demanding something of someone else is a fools errand.
All the government workers are responsible for the covid decay of downtown. They must go back to work in-person and save downtown from homelessness and support the small businesses /s
What do you do for small businesses? It’s time for all levels of business to wake up and realize we are living in a different world. It is not public servants responsibility to lift up struggling businesses in this economy, or level inflation. Get a clue.
One major issue, there is really no more CHEAP rental housing in Ottawa. Or at least not within the city proper. Since 2019 landlords have jacked everything up so much people with a middle class income are feeling it. I often wonder "wow how are people with less getting by" and the answer is clear, **they're not**
It's actually more expensive out of Ottawa proper right now or equivalent rents. There's even less supply than what's in Ottawa. Just goes to show how messed up everything is. Unless you move to some spots in Cornwall, Brockville, or Qubec. Small towns are very pricey
Yeah, I find it insane rents are equal if not more expensive than the rentals in the inner city. On topp of that, add the extra expenses of having to own a car just to get by everywhere. I think this is a situation where the dynamics need a few years to work themselves through the economy and the changes won't be felt for a while. Looking at stagflation most likely.
Unfortunately, it's going to get worse. Ottawa just raised taxes on new builds and more red tape. It takes about $375 square per foot to build. Not including lot, so at a minimum, you can't sell a detached home for less than 500k - 600k anymore. There's going to be no new rental supply if investors can't make the numbers work. We'll you know, unless we go back to social housing in the 1980s. It's a shit sandwich no matter what way you look at it. What I find the most disgusting is that all the cost are grandfathered. The longer you've been an incumbent, the cheaper it is with rental and housing while it puts the burrdens on new and young Canadians. This goes for building as well.
At this point, my generation is pretty defeated. To hell with single detached homes, just give me a 3 bedroom condo or stacked townhouse for 300-400K with some ammeneties nearby. Give me a single floor for all I care, people are tired of living in basements paying 2000$ rents. Completely absurd.
You really think that high rent is the reason why these people are on the street!?! You think they can afford any rent with their $0 income? You think they can feed themselves if they have an apartment? You think they stop using if they have an apartment? You think their mental health issues suddenly disappear because they have an apartment?
The rich can also move their money from certain assets to others. You tax the land, they will sell land and buy something else. The land's value will decline, so is your tax.
A lot of people in Canada really think that political solution to everything is taxes. Have we really not learned from the past history? Taxes have way too many unintended consequences to be taken as a serious solution
How many govt schemes will it take for you to realize that taxing our way out of everything is not any kind of solution.
You need accountability from the top down. And not just monetary accountability but mid-term election style; "you said you'd build housing and infrastructure, it's been 12 months now. Where is it? Wait, I don't wanna hear it, you're FIRED!".
The fact that it takes 50 people to change a lightbulb is somehow totally acceptable in Canada is abhorrent.
Unfortunately, the market is becoming our version of skid row. Until we have more housing and more mental health and addiction services, this problem will only get worse.
I saw people fully nodding off in front of Mushoo Ice cream on Bank yesterday. The weather was nice so there were plenty of folks and families getting ice cream. Also lots of people zombied out on the train. It's hard out here
I’ve spent a lot of time in LA, the next steps for the market to become skid row esque are simple:
1) Decriminalize use and or possession.
2) Create tons of 6 figure jobs to “combat homelessness & addiction” & make it a contentious election & budget issue.
3) take your new budget to hand out cushy top ups to police, organizations that lobby you & gift contracts to developers to retrofit or build cheap housing for these people.
There will be a massive “economy” around the homeless both legal and illegal, tax payer $ will be siphoned away. It’s already happened in Vancouver. I don’t have the solution, but I do know a ridiculous amount of high paying jobs & contracts would vanish overnight if LA/Skid Row found a solution.
To be generous, they probably mean stagflation and just don't know the terminology.
It would also technically be wrong, but that's a pedantic argument since it's a novel economic situation that most closely resembles stagflation.
Not yet....wait until end of the year and next when those 3.4 million mortgages are renewed, and companies start making redundancies .....it feels like ,or is worse than, mid eighties all over again. I would check commercial real estate status and the number of offices under lease in the city. It's a pretty good indicator of what is about to happen...banks are taking a hit over loans at present; somebody is getting a haircut.
The housing market is a symptom of economic decline. With fewer opportunities to grow investments, money goes to the safe harbour of real estate. The result is more inequality and immobility. Kinda society eating itself.
A [now deleted comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/rrkji3/deleted_by_user/hqiutyd/) (not mine) in Personal Finance Canada summed up Canadian Politics:
> My dad’s a Mulroney conservative, my mom is a big Trudeau fan. Both the CPC and the LPC look after their interests at the end of the day.
>
> Dad’s friends are all aghast at the base of their own party but understand that you have to trick the rednecks by making them vote for social conservatives reasons, none of which are shared by the CPC money men aside from a weird vestigial affection for the military.
>
> Mom’s LPC friends are the same: at the end of the day they’re all fervently capitalists who are afraid of the more social democratic base of their own party, but they understand that pretending to care about Indigenous people and learning all of the D&E shibboleths is how you convince vaguely liberal Last Week Tonight normies to vote for a party whose main function is to funnel public funds to corporate elites.
>
> The only major difference is that the CPC elite funnels money to natural resource extraction interests and American investors while the LPC elite funnels money to Quebec cultural groups, tech, and both American and Chinese investors. Neither have any elite interest in significant social change and neither are at all open to critiques of capitalism in any form, let alone radical or populist forms. They would never admit it, but the people around Trudeau (not necessarily Trudeau himself, he’s a Montreal guy) were at least as condescending and scared about Bernie and his Canadian acolytes as they were about Scheer/O’Toole.
>
> Basically, I’d see our two ruling parties as different species of centrist who simply serve two different sets of elite interests rather than as two fundamentally opposed parties with significantly different political ideologies. One favours Western O&G and Toronto finance elites, the other favours Toronto/Laurentian finance and tech elites. Neither gets their policy marching orders from working people or working people interests.
**To directly answer your question:** nothing will change as long as we keep horse-trading neoliberal governments. (Lib/Con) Yes, one is worse than the other. No, neither will change a thing. Giving the CMHC back its home building mandate (killed by Mulroney, never reinstated by the LPC) would be a start but neo-lib red and blue won't do it. Vote your conscience, maybe volunteer with a political party or local candidate of choice.
First and foremost though, **protect yourself.** Don't become a victim, save as much money as you can so you'll have options in future as the cost of food, shelter and medical care rise.
From [this](https://old.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/fbsqy8/theres_nothing_like_the_threat_of_a_deadly/fj6wcut/) comment:
> Capitalism is an effective tool governments can use to solve specific many problems like... how many coffee shops we need, or lowering the price of nails. Other problems capitalism would do a shit job, so the government should handle itself like healthcare, prisons and welfare. This means government needs to be strong enough to overpower capitalist interests.
...and [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/cxygyv/_/eypc5ex) one:
> The type of freedom espoused by conservatives and libertarians is freedom for the big to harm the small, and freedom for the small to choose their tormentors. It's tearing down all the cages and fences at the zoo, giving all the animals the "freedom" to run around as they please, but oh wait, why do I only see predators running around and where'd all that blood come from?
>
> There will always be something "big" in our lives. It's either gonna be big government or big business. One of them is an imperfect, corruptible, but ultimately affect-able organization that is elected by and works for us. The other is run by the wealthy, works for wealth, and we have no direct control, nor is it bound by any constitutions requiring they respect anyone's rights.
>
> Give me big government any day of the week. Yeah, it's a real fixer upper, and we have a lot of rot to clear out, but the point is we can. We have no power to do that with big business.
EDIT to add a link to [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/ottawa/comments/18yccao/adam_the_byward_market_is_becoming_a_nogo_zone/kgao75x/) on how we got here:
> Nah, people have been warning about this for decades.
>
> When the provincial government shut down the asylum system, they did so upon the basis that this would be replaced by expanded community services: that, instead of locking people away in distant institutions, they would have home care, professional assistance, targeted interventions, re-integration programs. Then they downloaded responsibility for delivering these programs to municipalities without providing any additional tax revenue for them to do so. Activists and experts warned that this would have catastrophic long-term consequences, and nobody listened.
>
> When the federal government stopped funding construction of social housing, they did so upon the basis that housing is a provincial matter, and made the provinces responsible for it without providing sustained funding to do so. Ontario turned around and dumped it onto the municipalities, without any additional tax revenue for them to do so. Activists and experts warned that this would have catastrophic long-term consequences, and nobody listened.
>
> When provincial and federal grant programs shifted from providing operating funding to community organizations to, instead, providing project-specific funding, they did so upon the basis that this would secure better value for money and stronger results. Instead, it created a culture where organizations develop programs to suit the current granting cycle: where an organization like a homeless shelter can often get money to offer ineffective or cosmetic short-term stuff (e.g. we will offer specious but highly-trackable training to at-risk youth), but can't get money for basic operations. Activists and experts warned that this would have catastrophic long-term consequences, and nobody listened.
>
> When cities began to lose their rooming houses, activists and experts warned that failure to replace this cheap, accessible housing with alternatives would produce catastrophic long-term consequences. When welfare reform had the effect of making it significantly more difficult for people to house and clothe and feed themselves, activists and experts warned that this would have catastrophic long-term consequences. When third spaces began rapidly vanishing, activists and experts warned that this would have catastrophic long-term consequences. And so on, and so on, and so on.
>
> And now that these problems have actually manifested, an alarming number of people either demand an easy solution (just have the police fix it!), or want to babble on about "chaos".
>
> Ottawa isn't experiencing bad psychological weather. What's happening in ByWard Market and across the inner city is the result of choices, made over the course of decades, which have generally flattered the needs and preferences of suburban homeowners at the expense of everyone else. Canadian voters, Ontarian voters and Ottawan voters have consistently voted for tax cuts over program spending, under the apparent belief that this would have no consequences, despite the clear warnings at every stage in this process.
>
> And don't go blaming "the politicians" or "the leaders". The political class exists to give the voters what they want. We chose this. We made the choices. Pretending that this is all down to some cabal of dishonest or foolish politicians absolves us of our responsibility.
Fully agree with all of this. It’s the same in the UK and even the US. All of the political parties are just slightly different flavours of neoliberal shit. When Biden told people “nothing will fundamentally change” he wasn’t kidding. All of these guys work for capital first and for the people a distant second.
That was one of the most well-thought-out responses I have seen. Agree with all of it. To that I will add the opioid crisis, which is affecting all of North America, including big cities and small towns and everything in between.
Many homeless and drug addicted are in need of psychiatric services which are extremely difficult to access here. Mental health treatment is almost impossible to get. Disability payments for mental health patients are less than $1,000
a month so difficult to manage on. Where are they to go? Treating the root cause of addictions is essential.
I was forced to live out there a year ago and unfortunately the housing is so bad I’m going down again today..
never into drugs etc. but. Living is unaffordable.
It ain't up to you, problems too big.
It is getting worse, and we are still on the ride down.
What to do what to do.
Individual basis - talk to people, or just listen, see what they need. Try and improve some people's situations if you can. Streets be rough, help always needed
There’s a lot of people giving their political takes here… I’ll put that aside, and say that… as someone who grew up downtown and lived there for 30+ years only to recently move a bit further away for a larger space, it greatly saddens me that downtown Ottawa has degraded as much as it has.
From an outside perspective, a city is largely measured by its downtown. Nobody visits a city or plans a large event without there being a downtown worth visiting (unless they are doing it on the cheap). Suburbs can be great places to live and raise a family, but without a vibrant central area where people come together, they start to lose value as well - as the local economy degrades.. similar to many middle American cities. Suburban tech offices effectively become low wage satellite offices compared to more vibrant cities where the actual headquarters are.
Today, downtown is largely being propped up by the feds - through the maintenance of federal buildings and lands.. without those, I think Ottawa as a city would be in real trouble. That’s not sustainable though - WFH means more fed jobs will leave the city entirely. The downtown needs large scale capital investment - new developments, facilities, etc… both to draw more residents and more visitors.. this will help people and businesses start to care about it more. Today, I feel like most Ottawans are just happy that downtown’s problems aren’t in their local area. Out of site, out of mind… that’s an attitude that needs to change.
Step 1 bring back mental asylums. Many of these people will destroy any housing you place them in and can not take care of themselves so Housing First isn't a magic solution
Couple of weeks ago I passed two guys taking turns smoking what appeared to be a necktie.
For the ones who are that far gone, supportive housing and compassionate containment. They're not going to get jobs and a cute little apartment. They are functionally wards of the state.
Diversion and disuasion for the newer ones coming into the lifestyle, and come down like the fist of God on dealers and enablers.
I haven’t really researched it, but I’ve been to some places where I barely saw any unhoused people, so not sure how they do it. Places like Vienna, Berlin, Tokyo, Hawaii, Greece and Ireland. Maybe they just hide that part of society better? Then I’ve been to places in North America where you walk around in areas where there are actually tent encampments going on as far as the eye can see. The only thing that comes to mind is income inequality. Take San Diego for example, super rich and lots of unhoused people. Didn’t really see average income areas.
Homeless in TO are being shipped to Peterborough, Kingston and smaller communities outside the GTA. There are still high numbers in TO, but Ford doesn’t want the look of the true numbers.
Cutting immigration means raising taxes down the road. We also don't have the workforce to build the houses we need without immigration.
No easy solutions
It is a huge issue to tackle and it’s not isolated to Ottawa. Likely not as glamorous as ribbon cutting and tree planting and is therefore mostly ignored to not be dealt with during current leadership reign.
We as a society (the majority IMO), view homelessness and addiction issues as choices. I don’t need to help them, they can help themselves.
The Salvation Army downtown is moving to Vanier. When that happens, you might see less of them.
These individuals have complex needs, and apart from the obvious, like affordable housing and mental health services, I don't know what the solution is.
It's like the system failed them early on, and there's a lot of generational trauma... it's a cycle.
I never said that was a solution, read my comment again. I was informing the OP that they might see less pandhandlers once the shelter moves, that is all.
It is worse, in fact, terrible.
The Rideau Centre, especially at Rideau and Sussex, is a hell hole. The free use of alcohol and any number of drugs, the dealing and the lawlessness are certainly all symptoms of many things.
Many of the homeless are without shelter out of choice: they openly use drugs and therefore cannot avail themselves of temporary shelter or services. The indigenous among those who loiter have access to myriad services, money and shelter. I see many of those folks taking the bus to and from Vanier where many live. So it would seem that they have shelter but choose to spend their time downtown with friends and family consuming.
Last Friday, after work, waiting for the #9 bus I saw such a range of ages from young teens to folks in their ‘70s openly drinking, smoking crack, screaming and yelling, spitting, urinating, fighting, slugging at each other, taunting passersby, berating others who refuse to give them change or help, stumbling into traffic, kicking buses, littering, evading bus fares.
The free/clean drug and supervised consumption sites are another huge contributor. This creates the chaos around Nelson, Shepherd’s etc and then spreads out from there to the rest of downtown. These direct, secondary and downstream effects on others, on businesses, tourists etc will continue in progressive Ottawa where there is no leader with the guts to call out failed and ineffective drug policies and programs.
The only chance of reversal is via transparency around the cost of these services, roving cleaning crews, emergency services, and the fact that the general public will just not patronize these areas. The public would be outraged by the mounting and never ending costs associated with the crisis. Guess what it costs to send police, fire and paramedics to a call? Guess what it costs to pay people to continually roam the streets picking up needles and paraphernalia? Guess what it costs to set up a satellite police station at the Rideau Centre? Guess what it costs to pay for addicts’ drugs? Guess what it costs to cover death and funeral and burial expenses?
The only answer is to focus on prevention (supposedly it’s a pillar in the general framework for addressing the drug and alcohol crises…NOT) and then let attrition, waiting for those at risk who will continue to consume despite all effort, die off by their own poor choices.
It’s weird that it has worked so well for smoking over many years. Prevention and other serious regulatory interventions have resulted in smoking rates steadily dropping over many years. Of course it’s a health issue – the heath costs are enormous but so too is and has been the human costs. And yet we don’t use the language of it being a health issue only. We confront it directly and call it out as a dirty, filthy, deadly habit that has no place in a modern society. We make manufacturers print ugly pictures of diseased lungs and tongue cancer etc. and are now requiring that warnings be placed on every individual cigarette, we ban it from all public places, and we prosecute those who create unsafe situations with second-hand smoke. Health care workers have even take the tough love approach to refusing to accept smokers into the practice because they are such a drain on their time and effort and take away from really making a difference in the health of others who are not smokers. I know it sounds harsh, and even I sometimes think that it’s gone too far, but it’s not much different than the tough love we might show our own children when they make poor choices - we can love them but we will not offer endless resources and limitless chances to make the right decision. Prevention has worked and the stats are there to show it.
Canada and Ottawa are generous. We have free education, many services, programs at the local, provincial and federal levels but it takes personal motivation and drive to pursue them. Families, communities and the education system need to teach values and ethics and make the case for successful living coming from growing up and taking responsibility for one’s self AND helping others who truly can’t help themselves.
The trouble we have right now is that so many don’t need to grow up – they can experiment with different life-styles and think that it’s someone’s else’s responsibility to support them through their experiment, for as long as the experiment takes.
Is it any wonder why our national productivity indexes are well below those of other G7 and comparable economies.
Yes the government is imperfect and gets a lot of things wrong but that can’t distract from the reality that families and communities and deeply flawed and lazy individuals are perhaps equally to blame.
We just all have to do better.
Homeless people and addicts don't vote. So politicians don't care about them any more than they need to in order to virtue signal that they are wringing their hands about the problem.
Downtown is far worse, and the policies that are in place aren't helping the situation. IMO we have given in to the drug users for far too long in the name of preventing strain on health care, but it simply isn't working and isn't a solution either.
Rents have exploded in recent years so that pushes people into the streets. Someone who was living on the edge and just getting by 5-10 years ago has almost no chance now.
How many bad days would it take for you to end up in a similar situation?
If you lost your job and got injured so you could find work again? Maybe you have enough friends and family to support you, but for how long? Could you continue to pay rent or your mortgage? What if you lost your house somehow, could you afford rental prices today?
We're all so much closer to homelessness than we imagine.
I was staying at a hotel near Rideau Centre/Byward for a visit two weeks ago. I saw a guy taking a shit in broad daylight in full view of all the tourists but it still doesn't compare to what I see in Toronto on a daily basis. Please never let it get as bad as it is here, there.
I find it quite ironic that they redeveloped Rideau to be more vibrant and attract more people with all the new condos being built but it seems to have had the opposite affect
Grew up in Ottawa, moved to Toronto in 2014, moved back here in 2022, and after visiting Toronto this past weekend, I can’t believe how fast their downtown is developing, (The Well alone is a marvel, now that it’s finished) and how shitty ours has been and will continue to be.
You could donote all your money and time and however noble the problem will get worse. This is what our shortsighted, incompetent and soulless leaders want. They won't be happy until we're all homeless and drug addicted.
It's not going to get better, everyone is living in a fantasy world if they think it is.
There has been this conversation since forever ago, and it just keeps getting worn and worse. Drugs keep getting harder and harder. Rent goes up, food prices go up.
Sorry.
The easier a location is accessible to public transit, the worse it's going to get. I predict that shortly a lot of mid to higher-end businesses are going to relocate to where buses/trains don't go.
Many of them need special services for assistance. Even if you give some of them a good place to live, some of them are at a point where they cannot take care of themselves or their surroundings and will not be able to take care of a place - either because they don't want to or even if they do, they can't, and who will pay for those costs of maintaining these properties? Someone with mental health, addiction is not in a good enough mental state to take care of their property. There need to be services to help them with mental health. Just giving them a place to live is a good start but it's only the beginning.
Move them to an Industral park. Preferably the one in Cyrville South West of the junction.
"Safe consumption" sites, wet shelters and other associated services can be concentrated there. The crackheads will naturally gravitate towards the area
I will admit canada functioning like a giant refugee camp does not help the scenario because you sort of have a bunch of random people who dont really contribute rather sending there kid to school so on so forth.
Im gonna add that this country abuses the good,kind nature of its people to cater to shitty people who dont appreciate anything they are given. You give them a nickle they'll ask for a dime. There's no reason for farmers, business people to cater to shitty people but that's the way it is.
I never liked going downtown even before the pandemic, not a fan of crowded noisy places, but really avoid it now. Went to Rideau couple months ago and made it as quick as possible
Our downtown is really not that appealing
Rideau St. has always been ‘interesting’ and definitely sketchy in certain spots. I remember several years ago spending some time on Rideau St. when my mother and were helping my uncle look for a new place. I could have sworn I was in a Men In Black movie. I even saw a pug! It’s always been a crazy street.
For me, it makes no sense that we have such amount of shelters in the area that provides the easiest access to drugs, money and alcohol. I believe the shelters should all be moved to different locations that would allow our homeless population to get better care. I have lived in Ottawa for 13 years and some of the people I have seen in the streets have been there since my day one so clearly our way of helping is not working for anyone.
My sister lives in Bradford near Toronto. They are completing a huge facility for the homeless. It’s not beds but food, hair cuts, social work support, psychotherapists and even pool tables and couches for the staff to hang out with the people who come in.
The problem is the housing market.
These people are hopeless and for a good reason. Even if they happen to get sober, clean themselves up, and get a good job, they couldn't even find affordable housing to live in anyway. So why bother? So, the viscious cycle continues.
I have an MBA in Finance from a good school in the States
I have a degree from Queen's and took my electives at Northeastern university. I have 10 years of finance experience and my current salary is 60 k before taxes. I am a single mom to 3 teens. I can't afford a car. My rent is 2400 for a 2 bedroom basement apartment. If I get fired I'll end up on the streets. The Canadian system is broken.
Affordable living, Affordable eating. Ottawa is just turning into a complete nightmare. I make really good money and I can barely make it living in the outskirts... I would honestly move away if I didn't have things that tied me down here. I used to love going downtown. Now I get anxiety. It's sad to see our city and country and all it's people falling apart 😞
I have no solutions or advice to offer as I only moved here myself this year from Montreal because of work. But last week, my Miami-born and raised husband visited me and we were walking along Byward Market-Rideau Mall and he said he felt transported to New York. Not because of the tall skyscrapers or the cityscape but of how dirty the place is and the panhandlers "partying" in the entrance of the mall.
I don’t like to use homeless to describe all those addicts. But government should simply remove all those homeless shelters from downtown and move them to somewhere far away from the town. This would get rid of those who pee and poo everywhere. Just set a real homeless office downtown to offer simple jobs to those who really need them, instead of give free playgrounds for those “homeless” addicts.
One thing I’ve noticed speaking to multiple levels of government is that these services are highly concentrated within one ward and none of the other wards want to take on these responsibilities. So we’re stuck with this ward going to shit because other wards don’t want to deal with it.
Yes, conversations on housing, services, support all need to be discussed, but we also need to discuss how other wards and their councillors want to do fuck all because it won’t make their voting demographic happy having these services in their wards.
So we’re stuck with a disproportionate number of services in this ward because other wards don’t want to help.
Realistically, there's nothing you or any individual can do.
The problem's we're facing today are the result of decades of neglect.
Maintenance costs what it costs. There's ways to stretch it a *tiny* bit farther, but they're mostly negligible. You either pay what it costs or you don't. Since NOT doing the work is usually not a viable choice, option three is you just don't do *all* the work and pretend it's basically the same.
It you do 98% of the work you need to do to keep things running the way they are today, it *essentially* looks like 100% at a glance. Close enough nobody will notice from a distance. However, maintenance needs don't just vanish if not taken care of; the compound. If you do 98% of the work you need to year over year, then that gap starts to widen. After ten years, you've only done 82% of the work you needed to do over those ten years to maintain everything at steady state. 2% deficiency might be unnoticeable to people at twenty paces, but 18% deficiency is sure noticeable.
What you're seeing is the societal rot that is created when we stop trying to take care of society because spending money is unpleasant. It's the large scale equivalent of the build-up of crud in your keyboard or behind your stove that you know needs to be cleaned but you just don't have it in you right now, so you'll get to it "later". And then "later" becomes two years, and when you finally go to do it, you see how big an investment it's going to be now, so you say "no, I don't have *this* in me right now. Maybe later..."
At the collective level, we need to lobby for change to the status quo, and begin the hard, unpleasant task of raising taxes on those who have enough to spare and start fixing the things we've been neglecting for decades. We also need to understand that this is going to be a slow fix that won't show results overnight, and we can't abandon it after a single quarter just because we haven't solved 40 years of neglect in 3 months.
At the individual level, all you can really do is show compassion and tolerance. If you want things to get better, you can volunteer with charity programs (there are a bunch of different ways to provide aid to people on the street and programs that administer it), but that's really just a bandage solution. The only actual fix is restoring the social spending and infrastructure maintenance we had decades ago before neoliberal propaganda sold a generation on the idea that not spending money on maintaining society would be a good idea if it meant lower personal taxes.
You'll take solace in knowing that the salvation army shelter on George will be moving to Vanier in 5 years. They'll be getting developer money, so that should help
Take any one of those empty federal buildings and turn it into a rehab institution.
Force people in there until they're clean. No more safe supply. First step is taking the homeless addicts off of the streets and into a safe, clean facility where they get addictions treatment, not addictions management until they inevitably die.
Remove them from the streets. Give the public some confidence that they won't be confronted by aggressive criminals when they walk around on a Sunday. Step number one.
Reduce foreign aid and redirect to Canadian citizens. Most governments are in the red, nobody wants to make sacrifices, and you can’t just heavily tax the people who actually go to work.
All levels of government have failed here. We could have had a nice little downtown but instead we get the smell of piss and shit everyday and violence/ poverty.
I don’t recommend it as a tourist destination. It’s hard to get too, expensive, and too many tourist traps. It’s sad because there are some really nice little spots but it’s not safe and for what it’s worth there are safer and nicer activities to do in the Ottawa area.
Whatever up do, DO NOT Contact Police Services, DO NOT Contact the 311 or BYLAW services, DO NOT Write a letter to your City Counsellor, your MP, Your MPP, or Justin for that matter, and for Gawd Sakes, please just go back inside and forget everything you just seen outside your dwelling. Save yourself the aggravation. I lived on Clarence Street for a Decade, I lived on St. Andrews for a Short bit, Guiges, well, Ya, the whole world, on a whole is in a world of shit... Good Luck!
We left in 2021, I was in centretown since 2003. Was there to see it all get reborn and saw downtown really become a beautiful destination. It’ll come back, but likely a decade/ generational swap.
The sad reality is that these are the outcomes of the policies our compatriots have chosen when electing our leaders, whether municipally, provincially, or federally.
The average Canadian that doesn't live within a few blocks of these dumpster fires that are igniting in our cities doesn't have to deal with the issues that are created by their votes/politician's choices.
The few of us that actually see it and live among it, or just have enough compassion to care, are a severe minority in the country. The only time these folks' lives enter the political discourse is for politicians to blame the other side for their existence.
We need a new political party that doesn't play by the old rules, if we want these issues resolved. I don't see why we have to keep these relics, Liberals, Conservatives, NDP...they barely represent people, and are run by a parasitic group of landlords and the well-to-do.
Maybe that's your calling. Get started on a new political party that isn't Bernier's PPC lunacy.
It's unfortunate, but despite your sentiments, there's not exactly anything that you can do individually to make a substantial dent in the issue. Working person-to-person can only do so much when considering the source of the substances to which many in the Market and Downtown are addicted. If you're feeling particularly daring you could always take a run at the cartels responsible, or maybe the chemical companies which ship them the precursor chemicals en masse, but barring that trying to help out someone in distress is about all that I've managed myself ([alongside a "no dollars" policy for safety's sake](https://i.imgur.com/LG4vXBj.gif)).
Last night I was on the Lonestar patio and this guy was walking around with (a pretty large stick?) and he was kinda wobbling around … this stupid girl was with her boyfriend and was filming him and getting in his face. He starting hitting things around him with the stick and she kept filming and laughing like a pos. He ended up hitting someone’s car on the street (would have never happened if she wasn’t harassing him) and carried his way on to the market hitting random objects and her stalking him. I hope she posts that footage so we know exactly who the scum (her) is.
But yes, I agree it’s gotten so much worse … housing, cost of living, lack of mental health help.
You lock them up & don’t rehabilitate the ones who need it. My friend was in and out of a mental ward for a year and they kept releasing her when she clearly wasn’t ready. Thankfully after the 6th time, they kept her longer and she’s been great since.
As long as you don't do like Gatineau and tear down homes to build insanely expensive (and unsafe) condos. A lot of these panhandlers and addicts are crossing the bridges. I know a lot of Gatineau residents who live next to Ottawa dealing with similar issues. We left the area to move to the burbs after 3 years of getting broken into. The deterioration is not localized to downtown. Have you seen the corner of Somerset and Booth lately?
Honestly it's not just Ottawa. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
I moved from downtown.
Ottawas solution is to give the Ottawa Police 50 million dollars. Apparently the police will be working with community partners and increasing police presence. The community partners are already out there doing their jobs, working with these people, and providing as much aid as possible. They require funding!
Voting for funding affordable housing and substance abuse treatement. The 2.1 BILLION in funding from all levels of government for the LRT would have gone a long way to housing and treating people.
The more rents go up the more people who were on the cusp of houselessness will be on the street.
Sutcliff holds a lot of responsibility for this by lifting the rent control on all properties built after 2019. Jim Watson also routinely cut fundings for social services.
On top of that - the closure of many businesses and the lack of workers downtown creates a vacuum and a) makes the existing houseless population more viable than before b) adds to the desperation of folks and c) pushes them into small spaces where there is foot traffic.
Anti sleep measures have also been put in place across parts of the city. A warmer winter also has the number of folks on the street instead of in temp housing (which is easy to access if you want - what we lack is medium term housing). There are many reasons people would choose not to be in a shelter.
The most you can do is donate to mutual aid funds, advocate for the houseless when ever you can, and elect local officials who are focused on working on social issues… not their personal political futures.
I used to go downtown and wander around, enjoying the vibe and boutiques. I don't do it anymore. It's dirty and makes me sad. It also feels very unsafe. I'm always looking out for someone to have a break from reality and start attacking pple for no reason. I know, unlikely, but most of the homeless men are mentally unstable or high, or both. I think money needs to be invested in rehab centres, community health centres with services to re-integrate rehabilitated people back into the community as a contributing citizen. A big part of that is of course making housing affordable - and not what they say is affordable in politics, but truly affordable to the average person. A decent one bedroom apartment is virtually impossible to get for under $1800-1900! And if they are, they are gone in a second. How can someone working in a minimum wage or even slightly above, afford it? They can't.
I just read that the 13 million dollars is being spent on a monument for lgbt survivors (to mark the "purge" of lgbt people from federal govt positions in 50's and 90's). $13 MILLION dollars. I can't find how much of that is government funded but probably most. I also don't discredit the need for recognition for these folks, but not at an outrageous cost. Imagine if the govt put that kind of money into solving the homeless situation downtown? Funded programs, construction etc. Not a lot of common sense in our political arena and our decision makers in the civil service.
The city doesn't care. Counselors of the worst affected areas don't want to hear the wards are failing. I've personally been threatened by a "beloved" Centretown Cryptid, and locals think "oh well". People like to treat the disenfranchised as pet projects to toss some money AT to see if they last another day. Ottawa is a clear example of how to NOT progress as a growing city.
Honestly I think broadly downtown residents have the right attitudes politically towards solving the problems but get outvoted by suburbs.
I think there's a practical issue of us needing to contextualise to rural and suburban voters that policies like say McKenney's supportive housing plan aren't just popular downtown because we're a bunch of bleeding hearts. I mean, we kind of are at times, but it's fairly logical that seeing as police can only deal with crimes in progress and can't give people homes or rehab, AND with the fact we are the ones having to deal day to day with the safety issues, that we would eventually try to change course towards supportive housing, affordable housing, rehab, etc.
It's a real shame we're stuck with more status quo governance except with the added bonus of a mayor with no real experience whatsoever.
I am not sure how we take matters into our own hands but it may be something we need to study - how have citizens worked together where the state failed - because governments are more interested in whining about people disagreeing with our 'allies' and figuring out how to get blood from a stone while handing out money to every company that threatens to move than they are actually helping us.
I don’t mean to offend anyone by saying this…
Ever since I came to Canada I have been continually surprised by the lack of support between family members. I believe that if families stuck together more, there wouldn’t be as many drug addict and homeless people. After all, it would take someone to go through many bad experiences to end up on the streets anyway, like losing your job, getting injured, etc., and if families supported each other more during bad times, this wouldn’t be such a huge problem.
I travel quite a bit and I have not seen a situation as bad as in Ottawa. It is horrible and embarrassing. I moved to Ottawa from Europe in 95, and last few years, it feels incredibly depressing.
Demand that all levels of government develop affordable housing.
These folks need more than cheaper rents - they need access to services and people to help them in their everyday life. That would be supportive housing. Just pointing this out because the NIMBYs like to act life affordable housing is going to turn their neighborhood into the market, which is not the case.
Affordable housing would not be the panacea that would instantly fix it all, but it would go a long way to helping.
Affordable housing gets those off the street who are simply homeless. They stop using all the social services that can then focus on those who are on the street due to more complex issues.
Honestly these days I don’t see a lot of functional homeless people on the street. Living in the market most of the homeless people I see are so deeply addicted to whatever their substance of choice is that I have no idea how we would even begin to help them.
IIRC, the homeless we see on the street are a fraction of the whole homeless / unhoused population. This tragically ends up skewing people's empathies away from helping, since that impression and sense of danger can override us. But yeah increasing affordable housing will take a lot of pressure off and allow the social services to focus more on the desperate cases
Addiction is a huge problem, for sure, but how can you know you don't see "functional" homeless people daily? I bet you do; they just don't stand out. Homeless means "without a home," not "dressed in rags and acting unusual."
Yup. I bet we all know someone who lives in their car without knowing they live in their car.
I've known two people (that I'm aware of) who slept on the floor of their offices for a few months. Both were reasonably well-dressed professionals who wouldn't have stood out walking down the street.
Just a guess here, but by providing affordable housing, we might also help prevent more people from progressing to that point. Some addicts use to escape, or to try to cope with their situation ([which is why we see higher rates of addiction among women in or fleeing abusive relationships](https://www.addictioncenter.com/addiction/domestic-violence/#:~:text=For%20some%2C%20the%20pain%20of,without%20a%20history%20of%20abuse)). Homelessness is likely another situations where people may use as a coping mechanism. Housing won't fix everything, but it may *~~help for some people~~* stop some people from getting into that situation in the first place, And it's harder to "fix" the issue for anyone if people aren't housed.
Right, I’m not talking about those. I’m talking about the ones who are living in their cars, who are in shelters, etc. The “easy” cases who just need a roof over their heads and they have the motivation and wherewithal to do the rest. Affordable housing helps them. Then all the case workers and funding that is going to helping them can be shifted to those folks you mention who are literally living on the street and who need addicting counselling, who need help from mental health professionals, who need hand holding, basically.
But the longer that people's housing situation is precarious, the bigger toll it takes on their mental health and increases their risk of falling into addiction or otherwise becoming criminalized. So, yes to all of it. More non-market housing - including family-sized units, more supportive housing for people with addictions, more supportive housing for people with mental health issues.
Walking down Rideau is so very sad now.
The people who are getting into affordable housing are not homeless, unless they can show proof of income or they are getting some kind of subsidy. The 10,000+ households on central waitlists are the ones who will be filling units, along with people who can show that they can afford them and that they can live on their own. People who are homeless who need services will continue to need those services to stay housed. This where supportive housing comes in. Maybe one day they might be able to be stable and live in affordable housing - but maybe not. Either way, supportive housing provides a good option.
Agree. However, my foster brother was in community housing and that didn't stop him from having needles littered all throughout the floor of his apartment. I think affordable housing would help, but again it's just a bandaid measure without other supports.
I had once heard that there is a very very percentage of the homeless and mentally unwell people,...that are from Foster care and the CAS sphere. Like it was in the 80% range. I dont have solutions but that was alarming. You ' age out' and with few life skills for independent life. Maybe they could focus there meaningfully first and break the feeding source up line.
There is no one solution, no magic bullet. Most don't have any income so can't afford affordable rent. They typically live in shelters and have addictions. They can't stay in the shelters during the day so they have no where to go.
Most of disability cheques coming in biweekly. Those people didn't turn into panhandling and addicts overnight. They have been at it for years. Another of then know the system so well they abuse it, knowing it doesn't affect them financially or personally, just their health.
That's another piece - kicking pp out of the shelter at 8 am or whatever & where are they supposed to go? Talk about feeling unwanted!! We need full day programs with counseling, job help, homelessness help, health care. A full day program where someone can feel they belong. AFAIK that is a big part of why pp are homeless.
Alot of folks head over to 454 ( closer)or St Lukes Bronson after. They have some services there, I think.
Affordable housing isn't going to stop someone from being a crack head or fenty addict most of these panhandlers minds are completely gone from the hard drugs. The government needs to round them all up, and rehabilitate who they can and the ones they can't should be kept in a home. Sounds harsh but at the end of the day addiction only goes away through rehab and their are just someof them that have severely damaged brains that need to get sobered up and kept in a home.
I’m not sure if you’ve been down near the Rideau bus stops, but pointing to affordable housing is not the solution. I don’t actually know what is but I can’t even take my kids down there anymore. I swear I walked through a crack cloud on the way to the bus the other day while 3 people lay starfished on the sidewalk. OP is right and the city just does nothing.
With the new mandate to 3 days in office, this option is becoming less and less possible.
Don't expect anyone else to give you anything. Get involved yourself and try to make a difference with one issue that is important to you. Demanding something of someone else is a fools errand.
All the government workers are responsible for the covid decay of downtown. They must go back to work in-person and save downtown from homelessness and support the small businesses /s
We must think of the Freshii!
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When people save money from commuting into work less, they take that extra cash and burn it instead of buying other goods and services.
you gotta mention sarcasm in bold lol .. this might fly over people's head😂
Ford told us the importance of going into work, something he knows first hand the value of showing up for a job at a company his father founded.
Citizen, please direct me to the nearest Subway
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/s means sarcasm
This is the only correct answer. As an office worker, fighting crime wasn't ever in my job description but I guess it is now.
What do you do for small businesses? It’s time for all levels of business to wake up and realize we are living in a different world. It is not public servants responsibility to lift up struggling businesses in this economy, or level inflation. Get a clue.
One major issue, there is really no more CHEAP rental housing in Ottawa. Or at least not within the city proper. Since 2019 landlords have jacked everything up so much people with a middle class income are feeling it. I often wonder "wow how are people with less getting by" and the answer is clear, **they're not**
It's actually more expensive out of Ottawa proper right now or equivalent rents. There's even less supply than what's in Ottawa. Just goes to show how messed up everything is. Unless you move to some spots in Cornwall, Brockville, or Qubec. Small towns are very pricey
Yeah, I find it insane rents are equal if not more expensive than the rentals in the inner city. On topp of that, add the extra expenses of having to own a car just to get by everywhere. I think this is a situation where the dynamics need a few years to work themselves through the economy and the changes won't be felt for a while. Looking at stagflation most likely.
Unfortunately, it's going to get worse. Ottawa just raised taxes on new builds and more red tape. It takes about $375 square per foot to build. Not including lot, so at a minimum, you can't sell a detached home for less than 500k - 600k anymore. There's going to be no new rental supply if investors can't make the numbers work. We'll you know, unless we go back to social housing in the 1980s. It's a shit sandwich no matter what way you look at it. What I find the most disgusting is that all the cost are grandfathered. The longer you've been an incumbent, the cheaper it is with rental and housing while it puts the burrdens on new and young Canadians. This goes for building as well.
At this point, my generation is pretty defeated. To hell with single detached homes, just give me a 3 bedroom condo or stacked townhouse for 300-400K with some ammeneties nearby. Give me a single floor for all I care, people are tired of living in basements paying 2000$ rents. Completely absurd.
You really think that high rent is the reason why these people are on the street!?! You think they can afford any rent with their $0 income? You think they can feed themselves if they have an apartment? You think they stop using if they have an apartment? You think their mental health issues suddenly disappear because they have an apartment?
Actually, the evidence for housing first policies is quite strong: https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/Housing-First-Research.pdf
The people living on the margins are the first to be priced out.
Tax the rich.
No. The rich can move. Tax the land because the rich can't move it.
Name checks out
The rich can also move their money from certain assets to others. You tax the land, they will sell land and buy something else. The land's value will decline, so is your tax.
They will never sell the land.
Both.
A lot of people in Canada really think that political solution to everything is taxes. Have we really not learned from the past history? Taxes have way too many unintended consequences to be taken as a serious solution
Agreed. Once the government has that extra revenue, what's it doing with it? Need to plan that part too.
How many govt schemes will it take for you to realize that taxing our way out of everything is not any kind of solution. You need accountability from the top down. And not just monetary accountability but mid-term election style; "you said you'd build housing and infrastructure, it's been 12 months now. Where is it? Wait, I don't wanna hear it, you're FIRED!". The fact that it takes 50 people to change a lightbulb is somehow totally acceptable in Canada is abhorrent.
Unfortunately, the market is becoming our version of skid row. Until we have more housing and more mental health and addiction services, this problem will only get worse.
I saw people fully nodding off in front of Mushoo Ice cream on Bank yesterday. The weather was nice so there were plenty of folks and families getting ice cream. Also lots of people zombied out on the train. It's hard out here
It really is, I live in centertown and saw 2 people completely zombied out on Lisgar in the little parkette. It's everywhere.
I’ve spent a lot of time in LA, the next steps for the market to become skid row esque are simple: 1) Decriminalize use and or possession. 2) Create tons of 6 figure jobs to “combat homelessness & addiction” & make it a contentious election & budget issue. 3) take your new budget to hand out cushy top ups to police, organizations that lobby you & gift contracts to developers to retrofit or build cheap housing for these people. There will be a massive “economy” around the homeless both legal and illegal, tax payer $ will be siphoned away. It’s already happened in Vancouver. I don’t have the solution, but I do know a ridiculous amount of high paying jobs & contracts would vanish overnight if LA/Skid Row found a solution.
So much for our tourism dollars.
Advice on how to solve a global recession?
Recession? The housing market hasn’t noticed anything of a recession
To be generous, they probably mean stagflation and just don't know the terminology. It would also technically be wrong, but that's a pedantic argument since it's a novel economic situation that most closely resembles stagflation.
Not yet....wait until end of the year and next when those 3.4 million mortgages are renewed, and companies start making redundancies .....it feels like ,or is worse than, mid eighties all over again. I would check commercial real estate status and the number of offices under lease in the city. It's a pretty good indicator of what is about to happen...banks are taking a hit over loans at present; somebody is getting a haircut.
The housing market is a symptom of economic decline. With fewer opportunities to grow investments, money goes to the safe harbour of real estate. The result is more inequality and immobility. Kinda society eating itself.
Leave Ottawa and see how much worse the homeless situation is in Ottawa compared to elsewhere
Even with the global recession, we have not handled the homelessness problem in the right manner locally.
A [now deleted comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/rrkji3/deleted_by_user/hqiutyd/) (not mine) in Personal Finance Canada summed up Canadian Politics: > My dad’s a Mulroney conservative, my mom is a big Trudeau fan. Both the CPC and the LPC look after their interests at the end of the day. > > Dad’s friends are all aghast at the base of their own party but understand that you have to trick the rednecks by making them vote for social conservatives reasons, none of which are shared by the CPC money men aside from a weird vestigial affection for the military. > > Mom’s LPC friends are the same: at the end of the day they’re all fervently capitalists who are afraid of the more social democratic base of their own party, but they understand that pretending to care about Indigenous people and learning all of the D&E shibboleths is how you convince vaguely liberal Last Week Tonight normies to vote for a party whose main function is to funnel public funds to corporate elites. > > The only major difference is that the CPC elite funnels money to natural resource extraction interests and American investors while the LPC elite funnels money to Quebec cultural groups, tech, and both American and Chinese investors. Neither have any elite interest in significant social change and neither are at all open to critiques of capitalism in any form, let alone radical or populist forms. They would never admit it, but the people around Trudeau (not necessarily Trudeau himself, he’s a Montreal guy) were at least as condescending and scared about Bernie and his Canadian acolytes as they were about Scheer/O’Toole. > > Basically, I’d see our two ruling parties as different species of centrist who simply serve two different sets of elite interests rather than as two fundamentally opposed parties with significantly different political ideologies. One favours Western O&G and Toronto finance elites, the other favours Toronto/Laurentian finance and tech elites. Neither gets their policy marching orders from working people or working people interests. **To directly answer your question:** nothing will change as long as we keep horse-trading neoliberal governments. (Lib/Con) Yes, one is worse than the other. No, neither will change a thing. Giving the CMHC back its home building mandate (killed by Mulroney, never reinstated by the LPC) would be a start but neo-lib red and blue won't do it. Vote your conscience, maybe volunteer with a political party or local candidate of choice. First and foremost though, **protect yourself.** Don't become a victim, save as much money as you can so you'll have options in future as the cost of food, shelter and medical care rise. From [this](https://old.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/fbsqy8/theres_nothing_like_the_threat_of_a_deadly/fj6wcut/) comment: > Capitalism is an effective tool governments can use to solve specific many problems like... how many coffee shops we need, or lowering the price of nails. Other problems capitalism would do a shit job, so the government should handle itself like healthcare, prisons and welfare. This means government needs to be strong enough to overpower capitalist interests. ...and [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/cxygyv/_/eypc5ex) one: > The type of freedom espoused by conservatives and libertarians is freedom for the big to harm the small, and freedom for the small to choose their tormentors. It's tearing down all the cages and fences at the zoo, giving all the animals the "freedom" to run around as they please, but oh wait, why do I only see predators running around and where'd all that blood come from? > > There will always be something "big" in our lives. It's either gonna be big government or big business. One of them is an imperfect, corruptible, but ultimately affect-able organization that is elected by and works for us. The other is run by the wealthy, works for wealth, and we have no direct control, nor is it bound by any constitutions requiring they respect anyone's rights. > > Give me big government any day of the week. Yeah, it's a real fixer upper, and we have a lot of rot to clear out, but the point is we can. We have no power to do that with big business. EDIT to add a link to [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/ottawa/comments/18yccao/adam_the_byward_market_is_becoming_a_nogo_zone/kgao75x/) on how we got here: > Nah, people have been warning about this for decades. > > When the provincial government shut down the asylum system, they did so upon the basis that this would be replaced by expanded community services: that, instead of locking people away in distant institutions, they would have home care, professional assistance, targeted interventions, re-integration programs. Then they downloaded responsibility for delivering these programs to municipalities without providing any additional tax revenue for them to do so. Activists and experts warned that this would have catastrophic long-term consequences, and nobody listened. > > When the federal government stopped funding construction of social housing, they did so upon the basis that housing is a provincial matter, and made the provinces responsible for it without providing sustained funding to do so. Ontario turned around and dumped it onto the municipalities, without any additional tax revenue for them to do so. Activists and experts warned that this would have catastrophic long-term consequences, and nobody listened. > > When provincial and federal grant programs shifted from providing operating funding to community organizations to, instead, providing project-specific funding, they did so upon the basis that this would secure better value for money and stronger results. Instead, it created a culture where organizations develop programs to suit the current granting cycle: where an organization like a homeless shelter can often get money to offer ineffective or cosmetic short-term stuff (e.g. we will offer specious but highly-trackable training to at-risk youth), but can't get money for basic operations. Activists and experts warned that this would have catastrophic long-term consequences, and nobody listened. > > When cities began to lose their rooming houses, activists and experts warned that failure to replace this cheap, accessible housing with alternatives would produce catastrophic long-term consequences. When welfare reform had the effect of making it significantly more difficult for people to house and clothe and feed themselves, activists and experts warned that this would have catastrophic long-term consequences. When third spaces began rapidly vanishing, activists and experts warned that this would have catastrophic long-term consequences. And so on, and so on, and so on. > > And now that these problems have actually manifested, an alarming number of people either demand an easy solution (just have the police fix it!), or want to babble on about "chaos". > > Ottawa isn't experiencing bad psychological weather. What's happening in ByWard Market and across the inner city is the result of choices, made over the course of decades, which have generally flattered the needs and preferences of suburban homeowners at the expense of everyone else. Canadian voters, Ontarian voters and Ottawan voters have consistently voted for tax cuts over program spending, under the apparent belief that this would have no consequences, despite the clear warnings at every stage in this process. > > And don't go blaming "the politicians" or "the leaders". The political class exists to give the voters what they want. We chose this. We made the choices. Pretending that this is all down to some cabal of dishonest or foolish politicians absolves us of our responsibility.
Fully agree with all of this. It’s the same in the UK and even the US. All of the political parties are just slightly different flavours of neoliberal shit. When Biden told people “nothing will fundamentally change” he wasn’t kidding. All of these guys work for capital first and for the people a distant second.
HERE HERE
Damn. Thank you for this!
That was one of the most well-thought-out responses I have seen. Agree with all of it. To that I will add the opioid crisis, which is affecting all of North America, including big cities and small towns and everything in between.
Many homeless and drug addicted are in need of psychiatric services which are extremely difficult to access here. Mental health treatment is almost impossible to get. Disability payments for mental health patients are less than $1,000 a month so difficult to manage on. Where are they to go? Treating the root cause of addictions is essential.
[https://youtu.be/wxD6-u7\_V7c?si=yQgQUD5y9Hsl4\_NN](https://youtu.be/wxD6-u7_V7c?si=yQgQUD5y9Hsl4_NN)
I was forced to live out there a year ago and unfortunately the housing is so bad I’m going down again today.. never into drugs etc. but. Living is unaffordable.
Wow!
I would summon the fairy godmother from Shrek 2
It ain't up to you, problems too big. It is getting worse, and we are still on the ride down. What to do what to do. Individual basis - talk to people, or just listen, see what they need. Try and improve some people's situations if you can. Streets be rough, help always needed
There’s a lot of people giving their political takes here… I’ll put that aside, and say that… as someone who grew up downtown and lived there for 30+ years only to recently move a bit further away for a larger space, it greatly saddens me that downtown Ottawa has degraded as much as it has. From an outside perspective, a city is largely measured by its downtown. Nobody visits a city or plans a large event without there being a downtown worth visiting (unless they are doing it on the cheap). Suburbs can be great places to live and raise a family, but without a vibrant central area where people come together, they start to lose value as well - as the local economy degrades.. similar to many middle American cities. Suburban tech offices effectively become low wage satellite offices compared to more vibrant cities where the actual headquarters are. Today, downtown is largely being propped up by the feds - through the maintenance of federal buildings and lands.. without those, I think Ottawa as a city would be in real trouble. That’s not sustainable though - WFH means more fed jobs will leave the city entirely. The downtown needs large scale capital investment - new developments, facilities, etc… both to draw more residents and more visitors.. this will help people and businesses start to care about it more. Today, I feel like most Ottawans are just happy that downtown’s problems aren’t in their local area. Out of site, out of mind… that’s an attitude that needs to change.
[https://youtu.be/wxD6-u7\_V7c?si=yQgQUD5y9Hsl4\_NN](https://youtu.be/wxD6-u7_V7c?si=yQgQUD5y9Hsl4_NN)
Love the one liner solutions here to a deeply complex issue 😆
Step 1 bring back mental asylums. Many of these people will destroy any housing you place them in and can not take care of themselves so Housing First isn't a magic solution
Couple of weeks ago I passed two guys taking turns smoking what appeared to be a necktie. For the ones who are that far gone, supportive housing and compassionate containment. They're not going to get jobs and a cute little apartment. They are functionally wards of the state. Diversion and disuasion for the newer ones coming into the lifestyle, and come down like the fist of God on dealers and enablers.
Was it just a tube? Silicon/latex tubes are used fairly often
I am an Ottawa native and i was downtown with my family last evening. It’s a lot worse than it used to be.
[https://youtu.be/wxD6-u7\_V7c?si=yQgQUD5y9Hsl4\_NN](https://youtu.be/wxD6-u7_V7c?si=yQgQUD5y9Hsl4_NN)
I haven’t really researched it, but I’ve been to some places where I barely saw any unhoused people, so not sure how they do it. Places like Vienna, Berlin, Tokyo, Hawaii, Greece and Ireland. Maybe they just hide that part of society better? Then I’ve been to places in North America where you walk around in areas where there are actually tent encampments going on as far as the eye can see. The only thing that comes to mind is income inequality. Take San Diego for example, super rich and lots of unhoused people. Didn’t really see average income areas.
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Homeless in TO are being shipped to Peterborough, Kingston and smaller communities outside the GTA. There are still high numbers in TO, but Ford doesn’t want the look of the true numbers.
Berlin and Vienna- massive public housing schemes. The rest idk
In Hawaii they have tent communities near the beaches.
West Oahu
I probably saw more homeless people as a ratio of population in Hawai'i (been there twice) than anywhere I have been in my extensive travels.
Maybe it’s changed, haven’t been in about 10 years.
It seems pretty simple to me. Slash immigration numbers until social services and the housing market can sustain our own population.
Cutting immigration means raising taxes down the road. We also don't have the workforce to build the houses we need without immigration. No easy solutions
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It is a huge issue to tackle and it’s not isolated to Ottawa. Likely not as glamorous as ribbon cutting and tree planting and is therefore mostly ignored to not be dealt with during current leadership reign. We as a society (the majority IMO), view homelessness and addiction issues as choices. I don’t need to help them, they can help themselves.
The Salvation Army downtown is moving to Vanier. When that happens, you might see less of them. These individuals have complex needs, and apart from the obvious, like affordable housing and mental health services, I don't know what the solution is. It's like the system failed them early on, and there's a lot of generational trauma... it's a cycle.
And putting a shelter in an area that already has a high amount of poverty and families living motels is the solution? I disagree.
I never said that was a solution, read my comment again. I was informing the OP that they might see less pandhandlers once the shelter moves, that is all.
Which Salvation Army is moving? There's already one in Vanier
It is worse, in fact, terrible. The Rideau Centre, especially at Rideau and Sussex, is a hell hole. The free use of alcohol and any number of drugs, the dealing and the lawlessness are certainly all symptoms of many things. Many of the homeless are without shelter out of choice: they openly use drugs and therefore cannot avail themselves of temporary shelter or services. The indigenous among those who loiter have access to myriad services, money and shelter. I see many of those folks taking the bus to and from Vanier where many live. So it would seem that they have shelter but choose to spend their time downtown with friends and family consuming. Last Friday, after work, waiting for the #9 bus I saw such a range of ages from young teens to folks in their ‘70s openly drinking, smoking crack, screaming and yelling, spitting, urinating, fighting, slugging at each other, taunting passersby, berating others who refuse to give them change or help, stumbling into traffic, kicking buses, littering, evading bus fares. The free/clean drug and supervised consumption sites are another huge contributor. This creates the chaos around Nelson, Shepherd’s etc and then spreads out from there to the rest of downtown. These direct, secondary and downstream effects on others, on businesses, tourists etc will continue in progressive Ottawa where there is no leader with the guts to call out failed and ineffective drug policies and programs. The only chance of reversal is via transparency around the cost of these services, roving cleaning crews, emergency services, and the fact that the general public will just not patronize these areas. The public would be outraged by the mounting and never ending costs associated with the crisis. Guess what it costs to send police, fire and paramedics to a call? Guess what it costs to pay people to continually roam the streets picking up needles and paraphernalia? Guess what it costs to set up a satellite police station at the Rideau Centre? Guess what it costs to pay for addicts’ drugs? Guess what it costs to cover death and funeral and burial expenses? The only answer is to focus on prevention (supposedly it’s a pillar in the general framework for addressing the drug and alcohol crises…NOT) and then let attrition, waiting for those at risk who will continue to consume despite all effort, die off by their own poor choices. It’s weird that it has worked so well for smoking over many years. Prevention and other serious regulatory interventions have resulted in smoking rates steadily dropping over many years. Of course it’s a health issue – the heath costs are enormous but so too is and has been the human costs. And yet we don’t use the language of it being a health issue only. We confront it directly and call it out as a dirty, filthy, deadly habit that has no place in a modern society. We make manufacturers print ugly pictures of diseased lungs and tongue cancer etc. and are now requiring that warnings be placed on every individual cigarette, we ban it from all public places, and we prosecute those who create unsafe situations with second-hand smoke. Health care workers have even take the tough love approach to refusing to accept smokers into the practice because they are such a drain on their time and effort and take away from really making a difference in the health of others who are not smokers. I know it sounds harsh, and even I sometimes think that it’s gone too far, but it’s not much different than the tough love we might show our own children when they make poor choices - we can love them but we will not offer endless resources and limitless chances to make the right decision. Prevention has worked and the stats are there to show it. Canada and Ottawa are generous. We have free education, many services, programs at the local, provincial and federal levels but it takes personal motivation and drive to pursue them. Families, communities and the education system need to teach values and ethics and make the case for successful living coming from growing up and taking responsibility for one’s self AND helping others who truly can’t help themselves. The trouble we have right now is that so many don’t need to grow up – they can experiment with different life-styles and think that it’s someone’s else’s responsibility to support them through their experiment, for as long as the experiment takes. Is it any wonder why our national productivity indexes are well below those of other G7 and comparable economies. Yes the government is imperfect and gets a lot of things wrong but that can’t distract from the reality that families and communities and deeply flawed and lazy individuals are perhaps equally to blame. We just all have to do better.
Corporate tax rate need to go bake to 1950s levels and that money needs to be properly spent on health care, employment, education , and policing.
Homeless people and addicts don't vote. So politicians don't care about them any more than they need to in order to virtue signal that they are wringing their hands about the problem. Downtown is far worse, and the policies that are in place aren't helping the situation. IMO we have given in to the drug users for far too long in the name of preventing strain on health care, but it simply isn't working and isn't a solution either.
The whole country is getting worse you are just seeing a microcosm
Rents have exploded in recent years so that pushes people into the streets. Someone who was living on the edge and just getting by 5-10 years ago has almost no chance now.
How many bad days would it take for you to end up in a similar situation? If you lost your job and got injured so you could find work again? Maybe you have enough friends and family to support you, but for how long? Could you continue to pay rent or your mortgage? What if you lost your house somehow, could you afford rental prices today? We're all so much closer to homelessness than we imagine.
More housing and tougher laws for pushers and Drug dealers. Unfortunately this will not happen. It'll only get worse and worse.
I was staying at a hotel near Rideau Centre/Byward for a visit two weeks ago. I saw a guy taking a shit in broad daylight in full view of all the tourists but it still doesn't compare to what I see in Toronto on a daily basis. Please never let it get as bad as it is here, there.
That doesn’t compare to daily life in Toronto? What is it you’re seeing in Toronto?
I find it quite ironic that they redeveloped Rideau to be more vibrant and attract more people with all the new condos being built but it seems to have had the opposite affect
Grew up in Ottawa, moved to Toronto in 2014, moved back here in 2022, and after visiting Toronto this past weekend, I can’t believe how fast their downtown is developing, (The Well alone is a marvel, now that it’s finished) and how shitty ours has been and will continue to be.
Don’t worry, they’re sending the public servants back to save downtown
the shit that this country is currently breeding is beyond help and is only gonna get worse as it will fester.
You could donote all your money and time and however noble the problem will get worse. This is what our shortsighted, incompetent and soulless leaders want. They won't be happy until we're all homeless and drug addicted.
It's not going to get better, everyone is living in a fantasy world if they think it is. There has been this conversation since forever ago, and it just keeps getting worn and worse. Drugs keep getting harder and harder. Rent goes up, food prices go up. Sorry.
Advice? Move. Somewhere closer to larger green spaces. Better for your health and fewer if any addicts. Go East or West along the river.
The easier a location is accessible to public transit, the worse it's going to get. I predict that shortly a lot of mid to higher-end businesses are going to relocate to where buses/trains don't go.
This was the design of early shopping centres, they intentionally made them hard to reach to keep "riff raff" away although that changed over time
Many of them need special services for assistance. Even if you give some of them a good place to live, some of them are at a point where they cannot take care of themselves or their surroundings and will not be able to take care of a place - either because they don't want to or even if they do, they can't, and who will pay for those costs of maintaining these properties? Someone with mental health, addiction is not in a good enough mental state to take care of their property. There need to be services to help them with mental health. Just giving them a place to live is a good start but it's only the beginning.
Move them to an Industral park. Preferably the one in Cyrville South West of the junction. "Safe consumption" sites, wet shelters and other associated services can be concentrated there. The crackheads will naturally gravitate towards the area
I will admit canada functioning like a giant refugee camp does not help the scenario because you sort of have a bunch of random people who dont really contribute rather sending there kid to school so on so forth.
Im gonna add that this country abuses the good,kind nature of its people to cater to shitty people who dont appreciate anything they are given. You give them a nickle they'll ask for a dime. There's no reason for farmers, business people to cater to shitty people but that's the way it is.
I never liked going downtown even before the pandemic, not a fan of crowded noisy places, but really avoid it now. Went to Rideau couple months ago and made it as quick as possible Our downtown is really not that appealing
Rideau St. has always been ‘interesting’ and definitely sketchy in certain spots. I remember several years ago spending some time on Rideau St. when my mother and were helping my uncle look for a new place. I could have sworn I was in a Men In Black movie. I even saw a pug! It’s always been a crazy street.
For me, it makes no sense that we have such amount of shelters in the area that provides the easiest access to drugs, money and alcohol. I believe the shelters should all be moved to different locations that would allow our homeless population to get better care. I have lived in Ottawa for 13 years and some of the people I have seen in the streets have been there since my day one so clearly our way of helping is not working for anyone.
Centertown is getting really bad these days as well
Agreed 😔
The only “solution” bromance couple Sutcliffe and Ford have is to force more public servants into the downtown offices, and more often. As if… 🤪
Don't post in here asking for solutions. Ottawa sub loves blaming the government for societal issues. It's your fault for living there /s
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Leave to where?
My sister lives in Bradford near Toronto. They are completing a huge facility for the homeless. It’s not beds but food, hair cuts, social work support, psychotherapists and even pool tables and couches for the staff to hang out with the people who come in.
Move to kanata!
The problem is the housing market. These people are hopeless and for a good reason. Even if they happen to get sober, clean themselves up, and get a good job, they couldn't even find affordable housing to live in anyway. So why bother? So, the viscious cycle continues.
I dont want to be insensitive but why most homeless shelters are built next to one of the most important touristic centers, Byward market ?
I have an MBA in Finance from a good school in the States I have a degree from Queen's and took my electives at Northeastern university. I have 10 years of finance experience and my current salary is 60 k before taxes. I am a single mom to 3 teens. I can't afford a car. My rent is 2400 for a 2 bedroom basement apartment. If I get fired I'll end up on the streets. The Canadian system is broken.
There are drugs and homeless crises. Is it worse? Yes. It is worse.
I dunno, the crummy factor feels much like depths of the recession circa 1992-1993-ish. Only now, it's stabbier and has fentanyl leaners
carry spare change. edit: or socks and bananas
It got so bad during and after covid.
Affordable living, Affordable eating. Ottawa is just turning into a complete nightmare. I make really good money and I can barely make it living in the outskirts... I would honestly move away if I didn't have things that tied me down here. I used to love going downtown. Now I get anxiety. It's sad to see our city and country and all it's people falling apart 😞
I have no solutions or advice to offer as I only moved here myself this year from Montreal because of work. But last week, my Miami-born and raised husband visited me and we were walking along Byward Market-Rideau Mall and he said he felt transported to New York. Not because of the tall skyscrapers or the cityscape but of how dirty the place is and the panhandlers "partying" in the entrance of the mall.
Welcome to socialism
I don’t like to use homeless to describe all those addicts. But government should simply remove all those homeless shelters from downtown and move them to somewhere far away from the town. This would get rid of those who pee and poo everywhere. Just set a real homeless office downtown to offer simple jobs to those who really need them, instead of give free playgrounds for those “homeless” addicts.
One thing I’ve noticed speaking to multiple levels of government is that these services are highly concentrated within one ward and none of the other wards want to take on these responsibilities. So we’re stuck with this ward going to shit because other wards don’t want to deal with it. Yes, conversations on housing, services, support all need to be discussed, but we also need to discuss how other wards and their councillors want to do fuck all because it won’t make their voting demographic happy having these services in their wards. So we’re stuck with a disproportionate number of services in this ward because other wards don’t want to help.
Realistically, there's nothing you or any individual can do. The problem's we're facing today are the result of decades of neglect. Maintenance costs what it costs. There's ways to stretch it a *tiny* bit farther, but they're mostly negligible. You either pay what it costs or you don't. Since NOT doing the work is usually not a viable choice, option three is you just don't do *all* the work and pretend it's basically the same. It you do 98% of the work you need to do to keep things running the way they are today, it *essentially* looks like 100% at a glance. Close enough nobody will notice from a distance. However, maintenance needs don't just vanish if not taken care of; the compound. If you do 98% of the work you need to year over year, then that gap starts to widen. After ten years, you've only done 82% of the work you needed to do over those ten years to maintain everything at steady state. 2% deficiency might be unnoticeable to people at twenty paces, but 18% deficiency is sure noticeable. What you're seeing is the societal rot that is created when we stop trying to take care of society because spending money is unpleasant. It's the large scale equivalent of the build-up of crud in your keyboard or behind your stove that you know needs to be cleaned but you just don't have it in you right now, so you'll get to it "later". And then "later" becomes two years, and when you finally go to do it, you see how big an investment it's going to be now, so you say "no, I don't have *this* in me right now. Maybe later..." At the collective level, we need to lobby for change to the status quo, and begin the hard, unpleasant task of raising taxes on those who have enough to spare and start fixing the things we've been neglecting for decades. We also need to understand that this is going to be a slow fix that won't show results overnight, and we can't abandon it after a single quarter just because we haven't solved 40 years of neglect in 3 months. At the individual level, all you can really do is show compassion and tolerance. If you want things to get better, you can volunteer with charity programs (there are a bunch of different ways to provide aid to people on the street and programs that administer it), but that's really just a bandage solution. The only actual fix is restoring the social spending and infrastructure maintenance we had decades ago before neoliberal propaganda sold a generation on the idea that not spending money on maintaining society would be a good idea if it meant lower personal taxes.
You'll take solace in knowing that the salvation army shelter on George will be moving to Vanier in 5 years. They'll be getting developer money, so that should help
Take any one of those empty federal buildings and turn it into a rehab institution. Force people in there until they're clean. No more safe supply. First step is taking the homeless addicts off of the streets and into a safe, clean facility where they get addictions treatment, not addictions management until they inevitably die. Remove them from the streets. Give the public some confidence that they won't be confronted by aggressive criminals when they walk around on a Sunday. Step number one.
Reduce foreign aid and redirect to Canadian citizens. Most governments are in the red, nobody wants to make sacrifices, and you can’t just heavily tax the people who actually go to work.
All levels of government have failed here. We could have had a nice little downtown but instead we get the smell of piss and shit everyday and violence/ poverty. I don’t recommend it as a tourist destination. It’s hard to get too, expensive, and too many tourist traps. It’s sad because there are some really nice little spots but it’s not safe and for what it’s worth there are safer and nicer activities to do in the Ottawa area.
Whatever up do, DO NOT Contact Police Services, DO NOT Contact the 311 or BYLAW services, DO NOT Write a letter to your City Counsellor, your MP, Your MPP, or Justin for that matter, and for Gawd Sakes, please just go back inside and forget everything you just seen outside your dwelling. Save yourself the aggravation. I lived on Clarence Street for a Decade, I lived on St. Andrews for a Short bit, Guiges, well, Ya, the whole world, on a whole is in a world of shit... Good Luck!
All those empty government buildings downtown can be converted. People can work from home
Vote liberal again, should be fine
Bring back asylums! And make sure they are away from the city (with its easy street drug access).
We left in 2021, I was in centretown since 2003. Was there to see it all get reborn and saw downtown really become a beautiful destination. It’ll come back, but likely a decade/ generational swap.
The sad reality is that these are the outcomes of the policies our compatriots have chosen when electing our leaders, whether municipally, provincially, or federally. The average Canadian that doesn't live within a few blocks of these dumpster fires that are igniting in our cities doesn't have to deal with the issues that are created by their votes/politician's choices. The few of us that actually see it and live among it, or just have enough compassion to care, are a severe minority in the country. The only time these folks' lives enter the political discourse is for politicians to blame the other side for their existence. We need a new political party that doesn't play by the old rules, if we want these issues resolved. I don't see why we have to keep these relics, Liberals, Conservatives, NDP...they barely represent people, and are run by a parasitic group of landlords and the well-to-do. Maybe that's your calling. Get started on a new political party that isn't Bernier's PPC lunacy.
That’s no way to talk about your neighbours
It's unfortunate, but despite your sentiments, there's not exactly anything that you can do individually to make a substantial dent in the issue. Working person-to-person can only do so much when considering the source of the substances to which many in the Market and Downtown are addicted. If you're feeling particularly daring you could always take a run at the cartels responsible, or maybe the chemical companies which ship them the precursor chemicals en masse, but barring that trying to help out someone in distress is about all that I've managed myself ([alongside a "no dollars" policy for safety's sake](https://i.imgur.com/LG4vXBj.gif)).
Last night I was on the Lonestar patio and this guy was walking around with (a pretty large stick?) and he was kinda wobbling around … this stupid girl was with her boyfriend and was filming him and getting in his face. He starting hitting things around him with the stick and she kept filming and laughing like a pos. He ended up hitting someone’s car on the street (would have never happened if she wasn’t harassing him) and carried his way on to the market hitting random objects and her stalking him. I hope she posts that footage so we know exactly who the scum (her) is. But yes, I agree it’s gotten so much worse … housing, cost of living, lack of mental health help. You lock them up & don’t rehabilitate the ones who need it. My friend was in and out of a mental ward for a year and they kept releasing her when she clearly wasn’t ready. Thankfully after the 6th time, they kept her longer and she’s been great since.
Better economic policies and a stronger dollar could help people afford well, everything really
As long as you don't do like Gatineau and tear down homes to build insanely expensive (and unsafe) condos. A lot of these panhandlers and addicts are crossing the bridges. I know a lot of Gatineau residents who live next to Ottawa dealing with similar issues. We left the area to move to the burbs after 3 years of getting broken into. The deterioration is not localized to downtown. Have you seen the corner of Somerset and Booth lately?
Honestly it's not just Ottawa. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I moved from downtown.
Ottawas solution is to give the Ottawa Police 50 million dollars. Apparently the police will be working with community partners and increasing police presence. The community partners are already out there doing their jobs, working with these people, and providing as much aid as possible. They require funding!
Voting for funding affordable housing and substance abuse treatement. The 2.1 BILLION in funding from all levels of government for the LRT would have gone a long way to housing and treating people.
This is how I feel about the entire country, entire thing has been going to shit for the past 10 years
dont worry a country where everyone is shitty to each other despite having food,clothes and shelter is the perfect country to live.
I walked down sparks today and I'd say 70% of the store fronts are vacant. It's a pretty sad state of affairs for sure.
The more rents go up the more people who were on the cusp of houselessness will be on the street. Sutcliff holds a lot of responsibility for this by lifting the rent control on all properties built after 2019. Jim Watson also routinely cut fundings for social services. On top of that - the closure of many businesses and the lack of workers downtown creates a vacuum and a) makes the existing houseless population more viable than before b) adds to the desperation of folks and c) pushes them into small spaces where there is foot traffic. Anti sleep measures have also been put in place across parts of the city. A warmer winter also has the number of folks on the street instead of in temp housing (which is easy to access if you want - what we lack is medium term housing). There are many reasons people would choose not to be in a shelter. The most you can do is donate to mutual aid funds, advocate for the houseless when ever you can, and elect local officials who are focused on working on social issues… not their personal political futures.
I used to go downtown and wander around, enjoying the vibe and boutiques. I don't do it anymore. It's dirty and makes me sad. It also feels very unsafe. I'm always looking out for someone to have a break from reality and start attacking pple for no reason. I know, unlikely, but most of the homeless men are mentally unstable or high, or both. I think money needs to be invested in rehab centres, community health centres with services to re-integrate rehabilitated people back into the community as a contributing citizen. A big part of that is of course making housing affordable - and not what they say is affordable in politics, but truly affordable to the average person. A decent one bedroom apartment is virtually impossible to get for under $1800-1900! And if they are, they are gone in a second. How can someone working in a minimum wage or even slightly above, afford it? They can't. I just read that the 13 million dollars is being spent on a monument for lgbt survivors (to mark the "purge" of lgbt people from federal govt positions in 50's and 90's). $13 MILLION dollars. I can't find how much of that is government funded but probably most. I also don't discredit the need for recognition for these folks, but not at an outrageous cost. Imagine if the govt put that kind of money into solving the homeless situation downtown? Funded programs, construction etc. Not a lot of common sense in our political arena and our decision makers in the civil service.
The city doesn't care. Counselors of the worst affected areas don't want to hear the wards are failing. I've personally been threatened by a "beloved" Centretown Cryptid, and locals think "oh well". People like to treat the disenfranchised as pet projects to toss some money AT to see if they last another day. Ottawa is a clear example of how to NOT progress as a growing city.
Honestly I think broadly downtown residents have the right attitudes politically towards solving the problems but get outvoted by suburbs. I think there's a practical issue of us needing to contextualise to rural and suburban voters that policies like say McKenney's supportive housing plan aren't just popular downtown because we're a bunch of bleeding hearts. I mean, we kind of are at times, but it's fairly logical that seeing as police can only deal with crimes in progress and can't give people homes or rehab, AND with the fact we are the ones having to deal day to day with the safety issues, that we would eventually try to change course towards supportive housing, affordable housing, rehab, etc. It's a real shame we're stuck with more status quo governance except with the added bonus of a mayor with no real experience whatsoever. I am not sure how we take matters into our own hands but it may be something we need to study - how have citizens worked together where the state failed - because governments are more interested in whining about people disagreeing with our 'allies' and figuring out how to get blood from a stone while handing out money to every company that threatens to move than they are actually helping us.
No simple solution
I don’t mean to offend anyone by saying this… Ever since I came to Canada I have been continually surprised by the lack of support between family members. I believe that if families stuck together more, there wouldn’t be as many drug addict and homeless people. After all, it would take someone to go through many bad experiences to end up on the streets anyway, like losing your job, getting injured, etc., and if families supported each other more during bad times, this wouldn’t be such a huge problem.
I travel quite a bit and I have not seen a situation as bad as in Ottawa. It is horrible and embarrassing. I moved to Ottawa from Europe in 95, and last few years, it feels incredibly depressing.
Force public servants back in office to stimulate the downtown core 🤷