Say goodbye to middle-class suburbia

The Star pisses me off. They fill their article with "thoughtful insights" such as:

Quote:

policies such as universal health care and social assistance helped build the middle class. Cutbacks, including downloading of social services from the province to cities and a lack of affordable housing and job protection, are leading to its destruction.

When it's really all code, anti-poor, anti-immigrant, and speifically anti-Muslim code for "them brown people caused that "white flight" thing we've been hearing about that goes on in the US."

Click the link. Look at the photo, front and center, that goes with the article.

Absolute Racist Bullshit.

Quote:

During the 1970s, Toronto was a predominantly middle-class city, with 341 of its 520 census tracts - neighbourhood areas determined by Statistics Canada so that they have roughly 4,000 residents each - in the middle-income category. Poverty was contained in the city's urban core.

Ah, yes, the idea of "containing" poverty, as if it's a disease or an unfortunate by-product of bad choices and bad lifestyles. Argh! Now, of course, the entire downtown is prime real estate for goddamn condos. From Dufferin to Broadview, from the lake to St. Clair. Poor people and lower income neighbourhoods are being pushed out, to the near-suburbs, where there is horrible access to transit and lower rents.

It's city-wide gentrification, it's been going on for years, and it's working. Downtown is already looking like the rich suburban strip-malls: full of chain restaurants and condos. Poor people are being escorted out, block by block. Who cares where they go, as long as they get the hell out. Fuck.