As someone involved in actually physically building this city and from the political negotiations and socioeconomic issues and more that are involved in my field, I see all sides of it and I have a lot of information that you guys don't see until it hits The Record (if it ever does). This is information we need to know when proposing and designing new projects for this region. There is a lot broken here, but you aren't really going to see it on your way to work and back or from the LRT to some restaurant. My partner who works in emergency services is also very much aware of it, keenly aware of things on the ground much more than I (where I rely on statistics and raw data). She can tell you which houses are known to hold drug caches, who is a sex worker, where people throw away their sharps containers of needles (go dredge the "lake" in Victoria Park), where your stolen bikes and property are, where the last overdose was, where the street kids do things for their drugs (because they don't exactly have money). It's really not hard to find, so either you aren't looking or you are woefully ignorant of what is going on.
This isn't the worst city there is, but it is also not the best. There is a wide culmination of issues at the moment and it is really giving downtown Kitchener a bad image once again. As I said, downtown was a void in the 90s and then it sprung back, only to fall flat on its face once again. The residents of this city don't want this...they want a downtown they can go to without having to worry whether their bike is going to still be there when they're done at the park or wonder how many times they'll be asked for spare change and cigarettes. And business owners don't want to have to worry about their products being stolen each single day.
You can disagree if you want or dislike my choice of the word dump, but believe me, it doesn't change the actual reality out there. Obviously the post-pandemic period we're in right now is impacting things as is inflation, but there are a lot of other factors at play here particularly relating to criminal behaviours.
This isn't the worst city there is, but it is also not the best. There is a wide culmination of issues at the moment and it is really giving downtown Kitchener a bad image once again. As I said, downtown was a void in the 90s and then it sprung back, only to fall flat on its face once again. The residents of this city don't want this...they want a downtown they can go to without having to worry whether their bike is going to still be there when they're done at the park or wonder how many times they'll be asked for spare change and cigarettes. And business owners don't want to have to worry about their products being stolen each single day.
You can disagree if you want or dislike my choice of the word dump, but believe me, it doesn't change the actual reality out there. Obviously the post-pandemic period we're in right now is impacting things as is inflation, but there are a lot of other factors at play here particularly relating to criminal behaviours.