0:01 Like, bye! 0:06 This is Sean Campbell. Sean's in his third year at Ryerson University, but he just moved to this house in September. This is what his walk to class is like. 0:18 I'll see like a crazy cat fight. I'll see like two people like mumbling swear words to themselves and then think they're talking to one another and then get in a crazy fight. I'll see like a person walked down the street with duffel, empty huge duffel bags, swinging them around, singing them themselves. 0:35 Sean's places a block away from ours, near the intersection of Gerrard and Sherbourne Streets in Toronto. If you've ever seen it, you know we live in a pretty bad neighborhood, or at least a weird one. That's what we're here to talk about. I'm Morgan Bockneck. 0:50 And I'm Emma McIntosh. Welcome to Gerrard Street East. 0:54 There's just like so much going on here. But then at the same time, there's like young professionals making a ton of money just living like down every street. I really don't know where these all these crazy people inhabit like where do they live? Do they just live on the street? Do they live above these like convenience stores? I guess they live in places like this. 1:12 Today, the stretch of Gerrard between Ryerson University and Cabbagetown is notoriously unsafe. Assaults, thefts and robberies are common. We hear stabbings and gunshots once in a while too. Sergeant Chiu Chang has been working the Toronto Police has 51 Division, the downtown one which includes our neighborhood since 2009. He said what he sees varies from block to block but it generally isn't good. The day before we talked with him. There was a stabbing a few blocks south of us at Queen and Sherbourne. 1:43 There's a lot of homelessness transient people, a lot of drug use. You know some a lot of panhandlers and squeegees. We have no it just you know domestics and lots of thefts. And so, you know, it runs the gamut. We had a lot of different things. 2:05 It wasn't always this way. In the 1800s this neighborhood was a pretty swanky place. The land was owned by the fabulously wealthy Allen family. They're the namesakes at the Allen gardens park at Gerrard and Jarvis. In the 1850s, the Allen's started building homes on the land and renting them out. And not just any houses, they were grand red brick Victorian style mansions. The neighborhood quickly became one of the most upscale areas in the city. 2:33 We dug some photos of late 19th century Gerrard Street East out of the City of Toronto Archives. 2:40 This what your street used to look like. 2:42 No way. No! That's crazy. This is way cooler. This is right here. 2:50 That's Shawn again. He was a little shocked, which is understandable. The photos show clean, empty sidewalks and sparkling new houses. They barely look like the scummy street we know and love today. 3:03 See that looks nice. I don't know. This doesn't look nice. Like this street looks rundown and shanty. 3:09 So how did we get here? Well, in the late 19th century, the other parts of Toronto started to develop and the rich people moved north. As areas like Rosedale started to grow, the grandure of Gerrard and Jarvis fizzled out. In the next few decades, shelters and boarding houses began to open in the old mansions. It all went downhill from there. Patricia Aldridge known as Patty said the neighborhood was then much worse than it is now. She's lived here since the 80s. 3:38 When we first moved in, there was no fence in the backyard to separate them from us. And we would find used condoms, hypodermic needles, all kinds of stuff in the yard. 3:59 Patti owns Take a Walk on the Wild Side. It's a shop aimed at outfitting drag performers, trans woman and she says many of the sex workers who frequent the area. I seen a woman who has thigh highs and they're sort of like a patent leather with like a big stiletto. 4:14 Yeah, that was her on the phone. Yeah. 4:18 Patti says most of the problems in the neighborhood seem to stem from George Street. In particular, she points to Seaton house, one of the biggest homeless shelters in the city. 4:27 Everyone in their house is addicted to drugs. They're all crazy. Their stuff gets stolen. It's dirty. They have cockroaches and bedbugs. 4:39 Patty isn't alone in that theory. Here's how Shawn describes the residents of George Street. 4:44 They're like, down a slippery slope till their death. 4:49 Sean's roommate, Paul Lasinskey has a more nuanced view. 4:53 There's just a lot of people there that we're hanging around and you're kind of curious as to what their intentions are because it's just kind of like like they're standing there. It looks like it's really isolated from the rest of Toronto to like this weird little sketchy Island. 5:08 But everyone has their stories about the street. Here's one from Sean and Paul's other roommate Maclean DeWeaver. 5:14 There's this one guy and he has his girlfriend. I think her name is Shrek. And they're always arguing yelling at each other and he's always yelling Shrek, Shrek. 5:24 So what's next for this area? Next year, the city plans to clear out Seaton house and send the residents elsewhere. They're also trying to build a new LGBT focused sports center at the same intersection where that stabbing happens. Queen and Sherbourne people like Patty so that's a good thing. 5:41 You know, rich people would go to a psychiatrist. What do poor people do? It's almost like we don't want them here, but it's terrible thing to say that. 5:53 People like Helen Jefferson Lansky don't agree. Helens, a member of the queer trans community defense, a group that's against what they say is gentrification of the area. Gentrification is the process of renovating an area to suit middle class tastes. However, doing so usually raises the cost of living and pushes the lower class out. That's what Helen says is going on in this neighborhood. 6:17 So Seaton house is slated to be demolished and replaced with a building that would handle about a third of the number that they currently have. And the other homeless people would sort of be shipped out to the southern switch is not their community, their neighborhood. It's an alien neighborhood, for many people who spent their lives in the downtown, 6:41 But whether we like it or not, change is already happening. 6:44 But you can even see it on this street. Like just those businesses down the street are like all like trendy like vintage antique stores and like cool barber shop. So I know you see it happening already. 6:57 That's the show. I'm Morgan Bockneck, 6:59 and I'm Emma Macintosh. Tune in next week. 7:02 We'll be talking about crime.