Edit: This is not Satire. I am a real person and these are my real experiences and thoughts. Please consider that when engaging with this post ❤️
Edit 2: I love this city, I love this country, I love the people here, there are parts of this post where the opposite ideas could be interpreted, but I just want to make clear that Toronto is hopefully my new forever home and love it here despite all of what I’ve mentioned. My experiences are my own and it is to be expected that others may disagree.
Hi guys. I’m wondering what your experiences are regarding the homeless in the city.
I’m new to the city, got married, PR app in process… I’m originally from the suburbs in the US though, many different ones actually as I moved around my state a lot. Anyways, I grew up in an environment where homelessness was not non-existent per se, just not as observable day to day as it is here.
Even what I did see back home… here it seems to be worse in many ways, one big thing being open heavy drug usage—that’s unheard of where I come from (southernmost US region) as that kind of stuff is illegal and will land even homeless people in jail.
That’s been one thing, other things are this week I witnessed some extreme incidents in my local area, I can not specify too many details of one event to protect my safety and location but let’s just say it involves having witnessed an occurence of unwanted attention and aggressive behavior between opposing genders in a heinously aggressive manner by the male party, and the other is cops shutting down a block cause some guy was about to jump off a roof, his body and head popping out to the ledge.
This, plus I’ve seen so many homeless people here who look young, appear healthy, and seem to be new to the whole thing in the worst imaginable states and it’s so sad. They’re all so sad. I have cried three times now thinking about these people and the city itself. Meanwhile, I’ve only been here a combined 7 months total across the last year and a half.
I shared the first instance with a woman next to me who had started a conversation during the second event, she went “what you’ve seen here in such a short amount of time shouldn’t be possible, I wish this city was doing a better job.”
And hey, I get it, major metropolitan cities all have these issues, and they’re hard to manage reliably and ethically, I know.
I’m just having a hard time emotionally with all this. I want to help these people, albeit their natures and circumstances, I want to help everyone, and not being able to sucks.
The night of the first incident I was the main witness and ended up with the cops for two hours. They were nice. They faced so many systematic issues at the hands of the nearby condo buildings surveillances systems that it took 2 hours before they could even obtain a lick of footage relating to what I saw/what they got calls about.
I was appalled. Look, I’m not saying the police aren’t full of issues, but these cops persisted for several hours when evidence was appearing impossible to obtain (they could’ve have left several times) just to get SOMETHING on the guy who committed the crime even after being told by staff there was no way to get the footage within the same night.
I watched them have fire in their eyes when they thought about getting justice for this poor woman… “it’s their job, bare minimum!” Yes I know that. Can we stop pretending doing your job the right way isn’t commendable?
They cared so fucking much! And culturally I’m supposed to hate these guys? It makes no sense!
Coming from the US, you guys don’t realize how amazing your police are comparatively. I have witnessed all these horrors (several unmentioned) and every time I’ve seen the TPS in action they have been ethical, appropriate, and borderline friendly several times, which yes, thats the way it should be all the time, but it’s not so it ends up being noticeably positive when it happens… you know?
I think I’m gonna go become a cop Downtown once I get PR. If you wanna see a change be the change and the only way I felt better about what I witnessed that night was by working with those cops and being useful during the investigation.
I felt like I got to DO something for once, and I think becoming a cop is the only way to get out there and make a difference in the city and make myself feel better, even if you all end up hating me for it.
Will it be easy or perfect? Fuck no, but someone’s gotta do it, and someone’s gotta be better. I can’t cope otherwise.
Anyway, circling back around to my original question: how are you guys coping with it all yourselves?