Canada's poorest postal code,also known as the down town east side is home to a variety of people from all across the country.Most arrive here with little money and no idea where to go and a lot wind up living rough on the DTES.Addiction and poverty are what strikes a person at first glance and it's not an easy place to make a home.Not now,not way back when.The difference between my day and now is that the area is unrecognizable.With the Olympic games projected arrival things have gotten just a little worse by increments and if the recession hadn't raised it's ugly head,it would have been a whole lot worse.There have been evictions by landlords that wanted to make a quick buck but they have slowed with all the financial troubles.The one thing that everyone with an interest in the area has been waiting for is just how the Provincial government was going to allow for the clean up of the street people from the area to gentrify the scene as much as possible for the Olympics.They announced a program that will allow the police to force people into shelters if it's too cold or wet.This may be the opening but it can't be the whole package.This will allow them to "shelter"people from perhaps 8-6 o'clock.They already cleaned the homeless out from the restricted zones around Olympic venues.They've backed away from a program of ticketing people for minor offences that haven't been policed for years and the old council's project civil city was quashed by the new mayor and council.There will be some way thought up to allow the removal of the homeless from our city,or at least some way to minimize their presence beyond what has already been done.They have already done street patrols in an effort to get the open drug dealing out of sight as much as possible and are even sweeping the alleys in an effort to minimize open drug use.The area still smells like a toilet although there was talk of outdoor facilities as there were no open facilities after 8 o'clock.In a city still plagued with gang violence and a turf war that is still piling up bodies,all this worry about a very small area of the city which could just be designated as a dangerous place to sight see is really hard to justify.These people have been ignored to a fault for years.I doubt very much that they appreciate all the attention and will be happy when people decide to ignore them again.
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