What to know
- Parkdale residents identify housing affordability and rising rents as major concerns ahead of the Oct. 26 municipal election.
- Transit reliability and rising grocery costs are also creating financial and day-to-day challenges for residents.
- Safety is a concern for people travelling through the neighbourhood early in the morning and late at night.
- Residents also want greater attention to homelessness, economic hardship and support for the local community.
As Toronto heads toward the Oct. 26 municipal election, residents in and around Parkdale say affordability, housing, transit and safety are among the issues they want city politicians to address.
Now Toronto spoke with people in the area about the issues that matter most to them.
Parkdale residents want better transit support
For Feven, who works in retail, transit reliability is a major concern.
“Since they’ve been out of service all the time, especially on the weekend,” Feven said. She said the disruptions have been happening for several weeks and questioned what was being done to address the problem.
“It’s out of service always, and they’re not trying to do anything to tackle it,” she said.
Affordability remains top of mind for many
Grocery prices are another concern. Feven said many people cannot afford the rising cost of food, adding that “every week you have to pay like $100 for a simple grocery.”
David said rent is the biggest issue for him.
“I think rent is the biggest problem for all the society right now,” he said, describing rental prices as “a little bit too expensive.”
David said the city should do more to help with rental affordability, pointing to how much prices have changed since he arrived in Canada before the pandemic.
“It was pre-pandemic, and then after the pandemic, all the prices increased considerably,” he said.
Lexi also pointed to housing, the economy and support for the local community.
“I think being a resident of Parkdale, there’s a lot of community members that need to be looked after a bit more,” she said. “Making sure that people who care about our community care about housing, the economy, and just, yeah, looking after our community.”
Lexi said she believes there are politicians who “care and mean well,” but added that “there’s a lot more that can be done here.”
Another woman, who did not provide her name, said high rents are a concern for friends in the area, even though they personally are not struggling with rent.
She also pointed to homelessness and people struggling financially, saying, “We have a lot of homelessness, a lot of people who are struggling to make ends meet with this economy.”
Safety is an issue for some
For Manpreetkaur, safety is the biggest concern. She works in Parkdale but lives in Mississauga.
She described two incidents where she said someone followed her while she was walking to work around 5 a.m. In one incident, she said the person followed her to her building and knocked on the door.
“I was so scared,” she said.
Manpreetkaur said the city should do more to address safety, particularly because people such as nurses travel through all hours of the night in the area.
“There are so many retirement homes and hospitals here where nurses work and they come early in the morning and they leave very late at night. So I think they should do something about it,” she said.
The municipal election is set for Oct. 26.
