
Picture courtesy of CBC London (found here)
Hey blog, it's been a long time. I apologize for abandoning you for most of 2023 and 2024. I will do better, I promise. I have a lot to say, and this is a perfect spot to say it. Today's post has a specific topic, so I will save the more general life updates for a different day. For those who don't know me well, I was born just outside of Vancouver, and spent the first five years of my life in a small town near the Washington State border. When my parents split, I grew up in Rural New Zealand.
Moving to London in 1996 was like moving to a metropolis for me. My hometown in British Columbia had about 22,000 people. The city I lived in prior to that on the South Island of New Zealand had about 6,500 people.

A ChatGPT rendition of the rusty shipwreck on the beach in Motueka, New Zealand that served as my childhood playground.
Consequently, I fell in love with London as soon as we moved here at the age of 12.
A big deal for me on a Saturday was hopping on an LTC bus to downtown from my home in Northeast London and seeing a $2 movie at Smuggler's Alley Movie Theatre (which is now the empty lot at King and Clarence), followed by 2 $1.49 Whoppers at Burger King on the corner of Clarence and Dundas. Wander around and look in some niche shops, and I had a perfect day.

Basketball mad teenage me saw this movie four times in theatres for a grand total of eight dollars
Catching a bus home at Wellington and Dundas was never an issue. There was a constant foot patrol presence, and maybe a light smattering of homeless people at best roaming around downtown, minding their own business and providing no conflict with the foot traffic.
I was downtown almost every weekend, playing basketball at the YMCA and hanging out with friends. It was a safe place for a 13-year-old and his crew, and our parents didn't think twice about letting us roam free, with nothing but a quarter for a payphone phone call and some street smarts as a backup plan.
My first job was downtown, at The Silver Dollar in Galleria Mall. It was a happening place at the time, and I loved looking out over the Atrium to the three story fully decorated for Christmas version of The Bay, along with a huge Christmas tree to compliment it.

Playing baseball for Team Burger King as a 12 year old in North London Optimist Baseball and getting a free coupon after every game started a life long love affair
Life eventually happened and my weekly routine changed. I moved away to North Carolina after high school, and then came back and finished up at Western. My downtown visits changed from movies and burgers and 3 on 3 tournaments and my first high school job to bar hopping when not working my first service industry job.
I worked on Richmond Row from 2003 to 2011, and got to know the handful of homeless folks who roamed the streets. We were on a first-name basis, and I provided them with some food and a kind word whenever the opportunity arose. I had a lot of moments in my life where a wrong choice could have led me to similar circumstances to theirs, and who am I to judge?

This crew could be both a homeless person's best friend and a drunk entitled first-year Western student's worst enemy. Miss these guys.
In 2008, I was hired at LHSC and got to know many of them on an even more personal level, providing hands-on care and assistance in the psychiatric units at South Street Hospital, Victoria Hospital B7, and B8 floors, and the emergency department psychiatric area.

This ol' girl and the people who worked here with me did a lot of good for a lot of people. Just had to ignore the ghosts.
They were generally quiet and reserved, but lovely people once you were able to get their guard down and establish a level of trust and concern, while also sometimes providing the care needed for them to "detox" from whatever substance(s) led to their admission.
That job was the most satisfying job possible for someone with my background and abilities. Helping with Activities of Daily Living, ensuring compliance with medication orders, accompanying to appointments outside of the hospital, and system navigation, facilitating leisure activities, I loved it all.

Unfortunately, three things prevented this role from being a career.
Firstly, it was a unionized position and UNIFOR protected bad workers. There were only 8 full-time positions in the entire hospital, and they were filled by 20-30 year employees. One opened up when a colleague unfortunately had a heart attack, and instead of going to the hardest worker, it went to the person with more seniority despite having 12 disciplinary meetings under his belt. Because of seniority.
Secondly, starting in 2009, the McGuinty Liberal Government was spend-happy in many areas while also being cut-happy in the most important ones. A record at the time $24.7 billion deficit led to annual 1% cuts in healthcare under their new infatuation with the Toyota Lean/Kaizen model, and as the only position in the unit not backed by a regulatory college, my role was perpetually on the chopping block.

I used to have nightmares of this woman pulling the rug out from under me and taking everything I knew and loved with it.
Courtesy of The CBC
Finally, the hospital closed its daycare in 2016 as part of its ongoing budget challenges, and with no flexible or weekend childcare, it was time for me to go. I transitioned into 9-5 Monday to Friday Social Service work.
Once I got married and started a family, my exposure to downtown changed. I continued my work with marginalized individuals, many either on the verge of homelessness, experiencing precarious homelessness or "couch hopping", or straight up living on the streets. My client load got up to 2,000 active files, as word travels when you can help people promptly and fully.
Through my office and my friend circle, we were sourcing beds, glasses, clothing, jobs, medication, doctors, housing, and everything else. I still have a New England Patriots jersey someone bought me with their savings as a thank you, and a custom wooden pen set another person made me for helping get their job back.
I wasn't in it for the money or recognition though. I was there for the hope and the impact. Between 2008 and 2016, it felt like there was hope for the most marginalized, but since 2016 that hope and opportunity has all but fallen off of a cliff.

Me trying my best to hold on, except much taller and with longer shorts
Where did things go wrong, you wonder? A lot of things happened, and they combined together to make an avalanche that would make Boler Mountain jealous.
Social Assistance rate cuts and freezes started in the mid-1990s, beginning with a 21.6 percent welfare rate cut under Mike Harris in 1995.
The Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Assistance Program rates stayed the same through the McGuinty and Wynne Liberal governments, and have only seen their first rise in almost thirty years recently under Doug Ford in 2022,. which was still only a paltry 5%.
In that same time period, we closed a lot of hospitals and didn't build anything in terms of jails or rehab facilities. In 2003, London shut down the Emergency Department at South Street Hospital. Other units followed year after year, and by 2013 the hospital was completely closed.
In 2013, the St. Thomas Psychiatric Hospital closed as a facility that after World War 2 had 2,000 open beds. In London, we closed London Psychiatric Hospital in 2014, a facility that had over 1,500 open beds in the mid-1950's and closed with about 425 beds open and filled. It was replaced by Parkwood Institute, a new psychiatric hospital on the grounds of Parkwood Hospital that has under 200 beds.
Yes, you are reading that right. As the World War 2 veterans and the trauma they experienced moved on from this life, we decimated the local inpatient mental health care system.
Nowadays, if you are one of the lucky Ontarians that isn't part of the 4.5 million residents without a family doctor, you might be able to be referred to the outpatient mental health department at LHSC and wait many months for help, or you may end up on the sliding scale list for private counselling at Daya or Family Services Thames Valley, where you could wait at least 9 months for 12 sessions of "pay what you can" counselling. Otherwise, you're looking at $140 to $200 a session out of pocket.
Between 1996 and 2024, London's population has risen from 316.000 to close to half a million. We still have the same Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre capacity of 485 inmates, while closing so many medical care beds. Addiction and mental health and crime and poverty all have their hands together like a Taylor Swift concert.
EMDC courtesy of Google Maps. WAY too many needless deaths here
In that same period, Social Assistance rates stayed stagnant and a Studio Apartment in London went from $400- $600 a month in 1996, up to $1400-$1800 a month in 2024. We have gone from 15,000 family doctors for 11.3 million people in Ontario in 1996, to 17,000 family doctors for 15.6 million people in 2024.
At the same time, a year's worth of groceries for an average family was $5,000 to $6,000 in 1996 and is now $15,000 to $20,000 in 2024.
In 2016, I was able to help someone go from renting a studio apartment at Oxford and Mornington in a building with active drug use and violence for $600 of his $662 Ontario Works cheque, to a studio apartment on Baseline Road East for $800 in a clean and safe building once we got him on ODSP at $1167 a month. We should be spending 1/3 of our income on housing, but spending 70-90 percent of his income on housing was worth it as he felt safe and secure unlike being on the streets.
A person on OW could afford a studio apartment in this building for 91% of their monthly cheque in 2016. Now they can't afford anything other than a tent.
Now? At $1,228 a month, a single person on ODSP is roughly 2/3rds of the way to being able to afford a studio apartment.
When people on the margins of society can't afford a place to live, a place to eat, access medical care, or find the help they need to get ahead, we end up in a slow decline to where we are now.
How do people cope with the trauma of being unable to afford to keep a roof over their heads, food in their stomachs, or the ability to access the support they need?
They turn to addiction.
Addiction and trauma are very personal subjects. Some extremely wealthy and "successful" individuals bury their trauma-derived addiction at the bottom of a martini glass or pill bottle in the safe halls of their mega-mansion.
Others struggling with addiction are turning up dead on our sidewalks.
It really and truly reaches every single level and corner of society, including a dear friend of mine who passed away a few years ago that I blogged about here. He was young, brilliant, healthy, physically, and socially talented. And he didn't even make it out of his 20s.
Starting in 2016, local doctors became concerned enough with rampant opioid overdoses due to tainted drugs in London to start the first Safe Supply Program in Canada. A safe injection site followed in 2018.
It is without question that pharmaceutical-grade drugs are safer than illicit street drugs, of which their contents are unknown and risky. It is without question that the best place to overdose on drugs is in front of a trained and certified medical professional. Both Safe Supply and Safe Injection in London have saved lives.
Despite London's population skyrocketing, medical care access and available housing access plummeting, and the effects of the opioid crisis being obvious, our city still doesn't have a free and OHIP-funded detox and inpatient addiction rehabilitation centre. Kitchener does. Windsor does. Toronto has multiple. Ottawa has multiple. North Bay, Newmarket, and Kingston all have them. We do not.
If you want to pay out of pocket for private care, those exist in our city and many others. For a starting point of $500-$1,000 per day.
At the same time, our police service, one of the most poorly funded police services in Ontario has seen their response times for non-emergent situations increase from minutes to hours to days, given the skyrocketing population and the intermingling homelessness and addiction crises.
Our downtown had a commercial vacancy rate of 10 to 12% in 2014. By 2024, it has reached 30.4%.
Many folks no longer feel safe in our downtown. London Police Service statistics reflect an increase in drug-related violence in the downtown over the past five years, coinciding with the opioid epidemic skyrocketing. Weapons-related offenses are also way up, with many shootings, stabbings, and murders in the downtown core.
An interactive crime map for our city can be found here.
Our downtown roads have been under construction in some form or another since at least 2017, with multiple consecutive roads running in the same direction being heavily reduced or closed at the same time. In 2017, it was faster for me to ride a bike to my office at Dundas and Hale than it was to bus or drive, as so many roads were torn up. I couldn't go east on King, York, or Dundas at the same time. This construction continued with the building of Dundas Place and then of BRT.
Downtown property crimes are through the roof. While campaigning in 2022, a downtown business manager told me about sleeping on his shop floor in a sleeping bag to defend their property as so many break-ins had led to their insurance being canceled. Police and political response was next to nonexistent according to him.
Downtown business owners have also reported property crimes, including arson and human excrement being left in their doorways over and over again, including in social media posts and this media story.
This is not the downtown I grew up in.
It's not the choice of the people struggling, nor is it the choice of the people who own the buildings and businesses.
The contributing factors are apparent, ranging from lack of housing and financial resources to lack of access to care, and ease of access to drugs. Mix in lack of response from police and politicians for a variety of reasons, and the difficulties in building high density infill housing in the core, due to a litany of challenges including NIMBYism, delays and opposition through the planning and approval processes, along with supply challenges, labour challenges, and construction-related delays.
The more challenges we face, the more the most at risk people languish in squalor and decline. Losing hope for a brighter future and falling further into addiction and other mental health crises.
So, to recap. People who struggle mostly due to no fault of their own can't afford to live indoors or feed themselves, and can't access timely and regular medical care. But they can access both medical grade and illicit street drugs quite easily even though they can't get the same help getting off of them.
There's been a lack of political will and police resources in controlling the violence, and open drug trade and use in our streets. People can't get downtown. Businesses don't want to exist there, because they can open elsewhere in London with a higher level of safety and free parking. It's not a Farhi problem. It's a downtown problem. We can't or choose not to help the people on the streets, there is no accountability for their actions as a result, and as a result of those two forces; people no longer feel safe and no longer visit and spend time and money in what was once such a fun, busy, and important part of London.
Social service agencies and healthcare providers, of which my wife and I are both employed, are being asked to do more with less amid skyrocketing costs and plummeting budgets. Those caregivers are burnt out and quitting, going on leave, or changing fields en masse. Their funders, the government are trying their hardest to limit them to 1% raises when annual costs are increasing by 4-10%. You can only move backward for so long before your spirit will break and you throw in the towel.
These most vulnerable folks are left sitting on the sidewalk on Dundas Street, openly using and selling illicit drugs in broad daylight with no fear of consequence or recourse, and no concern for those around them who are not in their shoes and conceivably have failed them. Londoners as a result are avoiding downtown like truck drivers avoid using a street other than Talbot St to leave the downtown core.

Om nom nom. Courtesy of the London Free Press
Despite all of this hopelessness and struggle, I've still optimistically treated every single person I encounter with the full benefit of the doubt and the best intentions. You can tell when someone wants to make eye contact and be acknowledged. A smile, a head nod, or a friendly word can all go a long way at the right time to the right person. People thrive on their humanity being recognized and their sense of place and structure and routine being supported.
While working in inpatient Psych at LHSC, there was a zero-tolerance policy on illicit drug use. I caught patients "cheeking" and selling their meds. I caught patients smoking fentanyl from tinfoil on the unit, or sneaking in syringes filled with drugs on a return from a day pass. These were all addressed immediately, and every single time.
Drug dealers from Polonia Towers on South Street used to come over to the hospital and try to sell drugs to patients drinking a coffee in the hospital courtyard at 7 am. We caught them and dealt with it along with security and the police. None of it was permitted or ignored or made someone else's problem.
In 2024, we turn a blind eye to it. And our community and its residents suffer as a result.
Yes, these folks are struggling, yes they have been through a lot.
I have struggled and I've been through a lot,, which is why I work a job where I am very underpaid but still do a good job doing it. The healthcare and social services sectors are full of people like me.
Much like Michael Oher in the Sandra Bullock movie "The Blind Side", my trauma has led to a massive increase in protective instincts. I will treat people that are homeless, struggling with addictions, or running afoul of the law with the utmost dignity, respect, and kindness. As long as they don't impact my family.
That had never been the case, until today.
I take my kids to libraries all over London, all the time. Their favourite is Central Library, located in Citiplaza on Dundas Street. it is MASSIVE, and has a ton to do there, along with being in a mostly empty mall to play in as part of the building. We always park underneath the mall and have never had a problem.
Today, I had to drop my wife and kids off at the main entrance on Dundas Street, as my dog was in the van and I could not bring him in. Once they approached the door, a man who sleeps rough cut them off and cut in front of them to use the open doorway as a shield against the wind, to successfully light his glass meth pipe. He then turned around and blew the smoke directly at them.
According to ChatGPT, secondhand meth smoke is very bad:

The Papa Bear protective instincts in me urged me to get out of the van and to Uncle Phil him like he was Jazzy Jeff, to get him away from my family.
Cooler heads prevailed. But, despite the downtown foot patrol re opening an office a block away in 2023, and despite Citiplaza and London Public Library each having their own security, there was not a single iota of help in sight. At 4 pm on a Saturday on one of the most important blocks of Dundas Place.
My wife won't be visiting Dundas St, Citiplaza, or Central Library with our kids again after this experience. She was one and done, as she is a mama bear too. And there was no indication to her that this was an isolated incident.
How many others have had a similar experience and are foregoing downtown permanently for safer pastures like Hyde Park and Masonville? We need and deserve a thriving downtown, but for that to happen people have to want to go there and feel good about doing so.
Ten years ago, kids and families were off-limits. Jails had "pod bosses" who upheld a moral code amongst even the most marginalized members of society. (I know this because I was obsessed with the A&E show, 60 days in okay?) People sleeping rough and living with addiction had some sort of combination of fear of consequences and respect for others to use in private and to leave women and children alone. Police responded to open illicit drug use. Downtown was an awesome place to live, work, play, visit, and enjoy. it felt safe enough for the majority of people.
Now, it feels more like District 12 of Panem in the Hunger Games than anything else.

How do we make this better? Every single person who wants downtown to be a vibrant, safe, and accessible place needs to care. Part of caring is demanding the best of everyone.
We shouldn't allow people to smoke meth in the library doorway at 4 pm on a Saturday. We shouldn't allow people to have to take a bowel movement in someone's doorway. There should be access to basic human needs like a safe place to sleep, enough to eat, and a bathroom when you need it.
There should be accountability to the laws of Canada regarding illicit drug use. There should be access to getting off of drugs and moving towards better.
We just approved a heavy investment into our local police force for the first time in decades. As much as it hurt my household as homeowners and public sector employees capped at 1% raises for many years in the face of skyrocketing costs, I do believe Chief Truong is the right man for the job.
At the end of the day, we need to take back our downtown. But not through force. Not through finger-pointing. Through the ties that used to bind us. The ones where we looked out for each other. Where we all did our collective best. Where people had options other than escaping their habitual hell through the use of powerful illicit substances. People had hope, options, and potential.
Our downtown can be that once again. But the status quo won't get us there. We can't continue to enable and excuse the current state of affairs through a combination of coming up with excuses for actions and situations, and hoping someone else will come along and fix it.
The time is now. The ability is here. London is full of engaged, caring, resourceful, creative, brave, and resilient change makers. But if we do what we have always done, we will get what we have always gotten.
Who is ready to do something different? I am. It never used to be like this. And it doesn't have to be anymore either. But we have some work to do.
Let's demand and create an environment where it becomes easier to build high-density residential in our core. Let's support those builders in contributing financial resources to Housing providers with wrap-around supports like Indwell, or in building their own housing themselves like the current project coming from four developers working together. If you pay attention to local social media, the narrative is developers are evil. While campaigning, I met with everyone from Mike Wallace of the London Development Institute to Jared Zaifman of the London Home Builders Association to Shmuel Farhi himself, and the message at all levels was clear. They want to build housing across the affordability spectrum. London has been a difficult place to do so for quite some time. We can fix this.
Let's elect local, provincial, and federal leaders who want to be part of the solution. Let's ensure that they have decision-making power in their respective houses of governance.
Let's get the resources we need to the places that need them to do and be better.
Let's fund and demand a police service that enforces the criminal code of Canada.
Let's demand that Downtown London and its tenants hire private security companies like my friends at Riddari Security that have patrol cars and handcuffs and training in powers of arrest and use of force to fill the gaps in policing as they transition our services so that the $33 million Dundas place isn't a place to get high, fight, human traffick, and poop on the ground.
Let's demand that there is adequate clean and monitored restroom facilities downtown. And cleaning services and trash pick up.
Let's resolve our long-standing transit issues and clean up the lack of foresight and planning in our city hall's road construction division so that people can get around. The mobility master plan will help, but there's serious work to do.
Let's get social assistance rates fixed for once and all by demanding the political will to do so, and then electing those who have it.
Let's insist that our Provincial Government stop cutting healthcare dollars and nickel and diming their highly trained professionals. Same goes for the provincial and federally funded social service employees having to address heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story with less and less resources every single funding cycle.
There are achievable goals that will lead us to better.
Let's get to work.
I'm here to chat about this with anyone who would like to connect. I am @jmccall54 on twitter/x and instagram, and you can find me on facebook or email me through this site.
Thanks for reading.
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