I had someone try to open my backpack and take my laptop out at young and dundas last week waiting for the walk light. The only reason I noticed was because it got lighter and thank god someone else notice and grabbed him. On Sunday morning I was walking down front st near union station and someone had started a bonfire with about 30 lighters and was offering up some type of substance to the folks sitting with him while some young german sounding boys took photos and discussed, 3 weeks ago I was walking down college towards Bathurst and someone came out of nowhere half naked with a GIANT FUCKING WHIP and started whipping the ground around me shouting at me. wtf is going on?
Social breakdown. No access to housing. Opiate epidemic. Hyper alienation. Mental health crisis.
This kind of crap was happening in "outlier" cities around Toronto for quite a few years before it got into Toronto proper. Downtown Hamilton, Brantford, London, etc. have been problem zones for years on account of broken down working class people with no prospects and (I'm guessing) opiate or meth addictions. COVID only made it worse.
Every public park here in Hamilton has tents all over, basically permanent.
The way to start to solve this is to give people housing.
