Parkdale residents ask Mayor Ford to force new methadone clinic out of neighbourhood

I doubt it. People nearby certainly won't want the safety concerns, and perhaps more important to an up-and-coming neighbourhood, the risk to real estate values. Never mind that the clinic probably prevents worse from happening.

It's completely absurd and a misunderstanding both of methadone maintenance treatment and the neighbourhood in which they live.  Strickland is steps away from Dufferin and Queen W, in the heart of fucking Parkdale, and barely a block west of a large methadone clinic with adjoining pharmacy at Gladstone and Queen W.  There's also two methadone dispensing pharmacies nearby on Queen W, the Guardian and the Vina IDA, one just east, and one just west of, Landsdowne.  On nearby Roncesvalles, there's the methadone-dispensing Guardian Pharmacy.  St. Joseph's Hospital hosts the only clinic specializing in prescribing methadone to pregnant women recovering from addictions.  And there's a large methadone clinic at Dundas West and Bloor, across the street from the subway station to the south.

The clinic on Strickland won't bring addicts to the neighbourhood.  The addicts are already here, all over Parkdale.  Methadone maintenance has been proven in clinical trials to reduce crime rates, improve the survival of people with opioid addictions, reduce high risk behaviours like needle-sharing, and reduce the spread of HIV.  In short, the availability of methadone maintenance saves lives and makes our neighbourhoods safer.

I live almost across the street from a large methadone clinic.  I know many people on methadone in Toronto and sometimes wave a greeting, or chat, asking how they're doing.  Addiction is a part of the human condition, and people fighting addictions are everywhere, even on tree-lined quiet streets in downtown Toronto where the real estate prices are so high, people think they have the right to pick their neighbours.  

Surely children are safer encountering a methadone patient on a sidewalk than a drunk driver in a crosswalk.

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A couple of years ago ('07), there was a similar reaction to a combination methadone clinic/pharmacy opening in Corktown.  The clinic actually wasn't new to the area, and was merely relocating from Front and Frederick to King E. and Parliament, a distance of less than a km. Here's some of the rhetoric from back in the day:

Quote:

"Several of us were [in the park] one day setting up for a community event .  .  .  and there were people using the water fountain to wash their unmentionables," Ms.  Edmonds says.  "People were using the children's wading pool as a bathtub." 

Emotions are running high in Corktown.  The methadone clinic sits next door to the Little Trinity Anglican Church, built in 1843, the oldest standing church in Toronto.  The area bounded by Shuter Street, the Don River, Lake Shore Boulevard and Berkeley Street is home to a mix of single, young professionals attracted to the convenient downtown location and affordable housing, and older families that have called Corktown home for years. 

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n335/a07.html

Staff in the pharmacy told me that the woman who washed her underwear in the public fountain wasn't a patient, but a homeless person not known to them or the patients at the clinic who saw her.  Corktown is close to Moss Park, south of Regent Park, in the heart of east downtown.  The problems of the area are as long-standing as the crumbling Victorian gingerbread that attracted the real estate speculators.  The owner of the Corktown pharmacy told me he started dispensing methadone because area residents were begging him to do so; it was a service they required.

There was a community meeting attended by then-health minister George Smitherman, held in a nearby church.  I went in support of the clinic, and stood and said that I live in Parkdale, where there are numerous methadone clinics and methadone-dispensing pharmacies, and it's not a problem; that methadone provides treatment for vulnerable people who are already residents in the area.  So a Corktown resident stood after me, looked at me and said bluntly, "Corktown isn't Parkdale."

One of the Strickland residents was quoted as saying, "Strickland isn't Parkdale."  What these people have in common with the NIMBYs in Corktown is they seem to feel that investing in real estate and doing expensive renovations entitles them to have their cake and eat it too; they get all the benefits, the culture, services, diversity etc of a large city, without the problems.  The Corktown people were like, "I spent x hundred thousand dollars on renovating my building only to have people vomiting on the sidewalk out front."  Welcome to Toronto, is all I can say. If you want to put them in jail instead of help them, incarceration is a lot more expensive and does less to prevent crime than methadone clinics.

Sineed wrote:

What these people have in common with the NIMBYs in Corktown is they seem to feel that investing in real estate and doing expensive renovations entitles them to have their cake and eat it too; they get all the benefits, the culture, services, diversity etc of a large city, without the problems.  The Corktown people were like, "I spent x hundred thousand dollars on renovating my building only to have people vomiting on the sidewalk out front."  Welcome to Toronto, is all I can say. If you want to put them in jail instead of help them, incarceration is a lot more expensive and does less to prevent crime than methadone clinics.

Even though American urban areas have a bad reputation for violent crime, some of the worst mass shootings in US history that made major headlines (i.e. Columbine CO, Jonesboro AR) happened in middle-class suburbs.

Sven wrote:

Are you implying that violent crime rates are just as high in suburban areas as in cities?

Just pointing out that suburban life is not as calm and serene as you would think, and that the NIMBYs who don't like drug rehabilitation centres don't have a realistic perception of what goes on in their own communities.

N.R.KISSED wrote:

This is especially true if one considers forms of violence that are not always visible, i.e. domestic violence and child abuse. The dominant narrative keeps these violences invisible by always focusing on the "scary other" meanwhile the perpetrators are relatives, family friends, priests, teachers,sports coaches etc.

Are you saying that invisible forms of violence are as (or more) prevelant in the suburbs than in the cities?  If the visible forms of crime (murder, burglaries, etc.) are generally more prevalent in the cities, then why would the invisible forms of crime be any different?

Sven wrote:

N.R.KISSED wrote:

This is especially true if one considers forms of violence that are not always visible, i.e. domestic violence and child abuse. The dominant narrative keeps these violences invisible by always focusing on the "scary other" meanwhile the perpetrators are relatives, family friends, priests, teachers,sports coaches etc.

Are you saying that invisible forms of violence are as (or more) prevelant in the suburbs than in the cities?  If the visible forms of crime (murder, burglaries, etc.) are generally more prevalent in the cities, then why would the invisible forms of crime be any different?

It is well documented that the prevalence of domestic and sexual violence is consistent across various social classes. Due to the nature of society and the criminal justice systems this violence will be better hidden within communities with social status, power and resources as compared to marginalized communities.

This is the myth that is perpetuated by the media of the "scary stranger" when dealing with Supportive or affordable housing or social services being in certain communities. The reality of violence is that we have more to fear from those we know than those we don't.

In terms of others kinds of violence, in marginalized communities certain violences may be related to other criminal activities i.e. drug dealing. In middle and upper class communities membership tends to be in legal corporate gangs who engage in various forms of social and economic violence rather than street violence. YOu wouldn't want to get blood beneath your manicured nails. Naturally use of drugs in priviledged communities also fuels the drug trade and violence, including the big blue gangs war on drugs.

Yes that is what is happening, but it is not a suburbia thing.  Metro Vancouver has the same process going on in various of its componenet cities.  They too used to be suburbs but are now all one urban region.  Burnaby, the city I live in, was one of, if not the first Vancouver suburb.  It is now a high density urban area not a suburb.

Northern Shoveler wrote:

Seems to me that this area is not the suburbs anyways.  It may have been 70 or 80 years ago but not now.

You're right.  The urban-suburban issue was a little thread drift starting in post #8...