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I lived on the streets of Toronto for over 3 years between 1997 & 2001. I'd always been a bisexual 'loose, wild and crazy girl' as they say, and for me it was a natural progression. When I was 20 my family immigrated here from South Africa but I was way too immature so Quebec City and I didn't get along. I and a girlfriend hitchhiked out to run wild in Toronto. The fun only lasted the summer and then I spent 3 years living on the streets there. Doing 'the job' just to get by becomes a chore for sure. I spent one winter in a tent city near the lake but too many people made it a violent place. My last winter out there I spent in the Don Valley with a small group, moving our encampment every few days. I would likely have ended up dying out there but a guy I scarcely knew at the time drove all the way to T.O. and spent a week looking for me and just by luck found me when I was at my lowest and willing to go home.

High rent and crime are problems across Canada right now. Larger cities will be more strongly impacted. \nThe root causes are actually quite simple. It's from decades of downloading responsibility for many services until they ended up in the hands of municipalities who had no capacity to fund them, then made 2x worse by the disastrous immigration policy of just the last few years.\nIt explains all three of the problems you identify, unaffordable rent, high crime rate, and underfunded social services.\nSo these are not problems with Toronto, but at the federal and provincial levels. Simply repeating that there are plenty of better options elsewhere doesn't make it true, unless you can give specific examples. Other places likely pay less, require longer commutes, don't offer small size rentals, have even worse social support, similar crime rates, or some combination of all those factors.\nToronto itself isn't as bad as this video makes it out to be. The downtown core skews all the averages, yet all the reporting, b-roll, and examples seen here seem to focus on the core. Of course the reason why it's worse in the core is because so many people want to live there! But I'm not going to concern myself about people who complain that they can't afford to live urban lifestyle, to be a part of 'the scene'. There are plenty of much more affordable options within a 30 minute subway ride of the core. Well inside city limits. But your friends won't think you're cool, so... oh no!\nYes, rents are still too high outside the core, of course. But they aren't as ridiculous as this video suggests. The city is massive. Grow some humility and find a place to that you can afford to live, within Toronto.

I moved here 16 years a go (6 years in Calagary + 10 years in Toronto). I've witnessed the high and low of Canada, about 6 years ago, I already started seeing the dwindling quality of life. Limited job opportunities/security, deteriorating health care and public safety, skyrocketing rent/cost of living, and people are becoming less tolerant/welcoming. Of course the pandemic made it worse, and it exposed the social ills in the country. Still better than a developing country, but definitely not Canada I used to know and experience.

We have been living in the suburb of Toronto for over 40 years, and this was the best city to live in , but Trudeau has made a mess of this country . Cost of living is very high. Traffic is bad. Crime rate is high. Trudeau needs to go.

Canadian gov't needs to spread its population out of big cities, e.g., Toronto, Vancouver, to suburbs and invest more into infrastructure. I live in the US but have relatives in Toronto and I went to Toronto, Canada, back in the 90s. And I went to Toronto about two years ago, traffic congestion on 401, 404, and QEW highways were nightmare, no new highways built.

Live in multiple provinces, quebec is definitely the worst for healthcare out of them all. I hear people in Toronto complain but it was really nothing compared to here.

Why is there a Cuban flag in the middle of the homeless camp in Toronto? Are there homeless Cubans living there?

I m an immigrant who came here over 30 years ago. And I say stop immigration. We have been waiting for family doctor for 9 years now. When we came in we did not get any free housing or government money. We worked 2 jobs now we have to work 2 jobs to pay taxes and support new immigrants who can free housing. Come on now. My kids could not got to Toronto university because they could not pay for the housing there but yet you give money to immigrants to live in Toronto.

Nice video. I watched it as I like to learn from other perspectives.\n\nI was born in Toronto, and I must say, this “no time for life and fun” is a new thing. This lack of access to health care is a new thing. I agree with your assessment. It now seems lonelier in Toronto. \n\nCanada used to be different because anyone with a good job could afford at least a condo, but life became unaffordable not just for immigrants, but for everyone unless you are in your 50s-60s and own a home. \n\nI have friends working double jobs supporting family back home in other countries, but for some of them the family back home sound like they are doing better than them and own a home. It’s like they are sacrificing their life to be in poverty or full of hardships and their families get to go out for dinners and drinks with friends. Not them. Not true for everyone, but for some yes and I worry about their own retirement because retirement in Canada without lots of savings means you might be homeless or forced to live with family even if it’s not your preference. \n\n without investments and savings, it will be hard to beat inflation. Getting into debt and getting bad credit can mean not getting an apartment. \n\nThe birth rate is going down because it is expensive to have kids and income isn’t enough to match with living costs. Getting help from government is really not something everyone gets access too. One person might get housing support, 10 others may get nothing. Different governments offer different things. Programs end and change often. \n\nIn Canada definitely bargain and shop around for good phone plans. one idea is to get a pay as you go until “Black Friday” then every year or two when your good offer expires there will be many others. It’s the time with the best deals saving almost half. For instance, I have 50 gigs for $25 for two years from a large provider. Telephone companies are the one place where people must bargain and even ask for better deals as a must.\n\nThe people you see living in big houses, will have kids that can’t afford the same. This is because prices keep rising. The system protects the very rich, but will also drain the middle class often within 1-2 generations. Do not link your business to your personal finance, or creditors can take your home. Some not knowing this lose everything and rich people know better. \n\nPeople live until they are very old, so inheritance is pretty much meaningless to rely on, so no matter what your parents have you must hustle in life. \n\nI do think Canada can become what we want over time. Citizens need to fight the trend of great community spaces, restaurants and bars going out of business and dumb corporations move in with bad boring restaurants. Like a McDonald’s where maybe a popular cultural hang out was. \n\nPart of the problem is a lack of mixed income housing areas, so it’s hard to stay living where you grew up. Artists and musicians help make a city great, but many cannot afford to live here.\n\nFamilies and communities staying together means more support for those with young kids and older relatives when they need help. Yet how is this possible in a city that is always pushing out lower income people when wealthier people desire the area. \n\nIn Toronto, every time you move you have to take what is available and that might mean moving an hour away from everyone you know. This weakens communities. Plus, if you live too far from your work you will have no time to socialize for most the week due to travel time. \n\nI think those who grew up in Toronto do have a certain culture of acceptance with others from many cultures, because your friends at school were from all over. But with new migrants sometimes it isn’t until the second generation that their social circles get diverse. This can be isolating and it’s even isolating as those from Toronto eventually leave dreaming of staying in one spot and not forced to move constantly when a landlord investor sells every house you move into. \n\n\nToronto really needs to protect affordability of housing for at least some housing in every section so that people can save money if they live in the city, and not have to leave their communities and be far from their friends and family. \n\notherwise eventually people get sick of the hustle and it’s too tiring to travel 1+ hrs each way to visit someone during Monday to Friday. \n\n20 years ago any professional could at least buy a condo. Not today. There is too much competition now and investors are allowed to buy up all the most affordable housing that once was a pathway to owning a home. \n\nRich policy makers got greedy and destroyed canada and hopefully diversity in leadership will help make Canada better. But they perhaps people knew to Canada can reject this lonely structure and help us rebuild Toronto into an amazing place. \n\nWe need to make sure everyone can afford housing with 30% of their income. I think that will help

I was born and raised in Ontario. Ontario should be as the least favorable province to live. Inflated home prices, lask of meaningful imployment and high numbers of car thefts. When Toronto Police tell you to l3ave your car fobs ouside your door something is drastically wrong.\nBC would be my place of choice.

I may receive a lot of criticism for my opinion, but I feel compelled to share my experience as a resident and worker in this country. I immigrated to Canada from Ukraine in 2022 and have since been living and working in Winnipeg. This country has offered me numerous opportunities, even though I do not hold high-ranking positions. My wife and I are able to save a bit of money for unforeseen expenses. Just when I started to feel settled and thought that things were going quite well, I encountered numerous videos claiming the opposite, particularly highlighting the scarcity of affordable housing. \n \nDespite the prevalence of such content, my personal experience differs. I pay $725 for housing with a salary of $2.3K, which I find to be a reasonable balance. Some might say I was fortunate, but affordable housing ranging from $800 to $1000 is readily available in Winnipeg, and this is just one city's example; there are many other cities across Canada. \nFrom my perspective, the issue of housing affordability is overstated and not solely attributable to the country's policies. Such scenarios can occur in any nation if half the population desires to reside within 4% of its land area (namely, Toronto and its vicinity), leading inevitably to soaring prices – that's simply economics. \n \nIt's not my place to dictate how Canadians should live, but it appears to me that the crux of the problem lies in the uneven distribution of the population. As the second-largest country globally, Canada can comfortably accommodate 40 million people or even significantly more. However, this necessitates a collective understanding that concentrating the population in a single city may not be the most prudent approach.

ive been living in Toronto my whole life and this video is true, in the past few years alot of citizens and international students who came here are living in the most absurd oplaces simply cause theres not alot of work and job oppurtunities, this was a great video and as bad as the video makes it seem toronto isint that bad its a good city but its slowly going to shit..

I'm a retired Canadian and moved to Colombia 6 years ago and life couldn't be better. My sister lived north of Toronto, sold, and moved to New Brunswick 2 years, but finds the cost of living unbearable, and is now moving down here as well in September. If you are considering such a move or are curious about it, drop me a line and I'll be glad to help.

Bravo and bless you. I lived in toronto for 45 years and i am completely agrees with you 100%.Borned a malaysian under B. colonial times.

I came in Windsor Ontario as a foreign worker in 2009, wasn't the best time to look for a job there but still. I did 1 year of studying, worked again, left for Alberta in 2012 where I still am. Got my PR in 2014 and citizenship in 2022. Most of the things I hear against living in Canada must be true, I don't doubt it but I'm just not aware of them. I didn't even know there was a bank account freezing during COVID. It wasn't easy to get a good job, I had to leave for a small community in Alberta to get the most of what I wanted and that's why I am oblivious to the harsher reality that people have to endure in Toronto or Vancouver. But the thing is, as soon as I landed in Toronto and got robbed 50$ by some guy (this is just an anecdote not the real reason), I knew I shouldn't try to make a living there. I know job opportunities are in those big cities but please, if you can, there are great communities that need people, workers, consumers and families. If you can land a job there, move! At least try. It doesn't even have to be that far up north, nor to be a mini small village. Small city, rural living, no criminality, cheap housing, lots of space, family friendly, no traffic, no wait time to see a doctor, friendly people, douchebags, we have it here. Are they drawbacks? Yes of course. Need to drive 1 or 2 hour to get a scan or an MRI, car dependance is exacerbated but hey, it feels like a free country where no one have been overpriced...yet.

I spent a couple yrs downtown Toronto when I was in my older teen years and that was before the open drug issue and even back then it was bad u had to watch out for being robbed or r@p*d it was so bad back then I ended up going back home and choose jail over the streets. Got my shit over and done with and since then life has been good changed my life 360 and have a loving family 2 sons and now I’m up living in Algonquin (beautiful area)

If you work at the Mcdonald and you're not in couple, just don't expect to live in big towns like vancouver, toronto, montreal, ottawa or whatever and have a normal life. That's it. Go live in regions.

Had a healthy family member die from a mistake made by a top doctor not careful wen prescribing medication a month ago health care is definitely broken I live in Toronto

People in my city (3.5/4 hours from Toronto) are now advertising 5/6 people per room, the picture is a bedroom filled with mattresses because of the other exchange students living like this. It is terribly hard to find affordable living, charging 600-900 for a mattress in a room. Most of the homes being rented are from Toronto people.

I live 3.5/4 hours from Toronto towards America and the homeless problem, unemployment problem, drug problem is no different. Its all of Canada unfortunately.

I've been living in Toronto since 2016, and everything started to go downhill exponentially around 2019. I’m grateful for living in Canada ?? however, anyone out there considering moving to Toronto right now, think about it twice!

Stay out of this place its trash. Unless you are a millionaire you will be poor no matter what. And if u are a millionaire you wont be for long. The taxes are crazy, the cost of living is crazy. You will never own a home unless you are very very rich, the weather is horrible, if thats not enough for you all the above problems are getting worst by the day. Im an engineer making 130-140k a year and couldnt afford a house in even the cheaper cities such as halifax... toronto or vancouver? Forget about it. I forgot to mention the healthcare, people are dying in waiting rooms and from cancers that could be treated if detected early, but they are often stage 4 before even being diagnosed. Very sad but very common

I live 1000km north of Toronto and even in my small community we're having a housing crisis because of the influx of immigrants and foreign students. Fentanyl is also killing some young first time users with other laced drugs. Teens think they are getting just speed or coke and they end up dead cause there was fentanyl in what they bought.

It depends where you live in Canada. Toronto is not Canada! Vancouver is not Canada either.

I've lived in Toronto most of my life, was out of the country in 2022 and came back to a noticeably different city

This was a great video, I appreciate your complete unbiased reporting! Lived in Toronto my whole life, in my 20s and yeah, it just gets worse by the day. You should have gone to union station. When I worked in there, there was a suspicious package that evacuated half the whole station, idek how many ODs which is horrible, I couldn’t count how many I saw or how many I reported. An OD I called about, left zipped up on a stretcher, like this is only what I saw on my smoke breaks. How my store had a panic button underneath every single till, one time this guy who had been a problem was choking out a girl in the middle of the station, security on the floor above just doing jack shit to the point myself and a random stranger passing by stepped in as she was turning purple. Like, I can’t put into words how the city is deteriorating every hour…

Quebec #1? You've got to be kidding! Great maybe if you are fluent, and I do mean fluent, in French. Otherwise you're treated like a second class citizen. As a tourist destination it is fabulous. The best food ever throughout the province. Old Quebec City by far the most beautiful in Canada and Montreal for the marvellous shopping experience. All fine for a fumbling in French tourist, but moving there and trying to get on in fractured high school French is a whole new and not so pleasant experience. I lived in the province for just under 2 years so my comments are based on that experience. After travelling the country extensively I settled in Northern Ontario to raise my family. Now retired I live in Canada's largest city Toronto and love it.

As someone who's not too far from Toronto, not only am I ashamed, but you're seeing this almost everywhere around here. It's honestly heart breaking. Where I live, you used to never see anyone homeless, now they're at every intersection. Something needs to be done. My heart breaks for these people, regardless of situation.

Only LOSERs leave AUSTRALIA..........i lived in California, Toronto and almost all cities in Australia; it seems this couple professionally NOT well qualified so couldn't succussed much so feel sorry for them....soon they would regret coz Canada is nothing but American JUNKYARD

Do not live in Toronto. It is to expensive. Go to Montreal.

Honestly I live in Toronto for a few decades and still living,is this really Toronto ? Or other parts of the world . Seriously I never saw any place like that in Toronto!

I been living in Toronto my whole life and in 2024 I have seen more homeless people now than every before. The cost of living is ridiculous.

Toronto is a good city TO BE FROM! NOT LIVE! Even people with good well paying jobs can't afford to live in Toronto! So it's no surprise that Toronto is the homeless capital of Canada! The housing costs in Toronto are absolutely ridiculous!

Living in Toronto, I've seen this city degrade year after year in so many aspects and no-one seems to give a damn to offer anything but platitudes. \n\nIt's sad that the apathy from politicians and people has brought us to this point.

I just lived in toronto for 3 months its insane the homelessness

Thanks for making this video and spreading the truth of what's happening in Toronto. As someone born and raised in this city, I would sadly have to say to stay away from here now. In the past I would have said this is one of the best cities to live in. It was a great city and now it's a dead city.

Never seen a Hindi or Iraq living on the streets Toronto. Wonder why

I’ve certainly never heard a debate in Ontario whether Toronto is better than Ottawa—-the whole video is absurd and sophomoric—Canadian universities have many ‘internal’ students? You mean ‘international’? There are positive and negative aspects of living in every province—overall Canada has an exceptional standard of living without the gun violence and religious fanaticism of its neighbour to the south ??

I live in Toronto

I am a canadian living in Toronto, and I am absolutely sickened and disgusted by this place.

As someone who lives just outside of Toronto, the city has devolved in so many ways over the years. This is a huge problem that needs to be addressed ASAP.

I live in Toronto this is so crazy. Everything is full no where for anyone to go.

i live north of toronto, all the immigrants are literally ruining this country. so sad

You should have gone to the Alexandra hotel, it functions as a hotel as well as a place for cheaper living for the homeless I’ve stayed there as a guest visiting Toronto many times and have heard so many different story’s from the homeless that live there now. The park itself (Alexandra park) next to the hotel has many homeless there too. There was a time I went to stay in Toronto for the weekend and couldn’t find anywhere to stay hotels were booked up or too expensive for my budget and one of the people that were living in Alexandra park overheard me when I tried to check in and offered a tent and food it was very welcoming I stayed with them for a few hours but ended up leaving because my ex had seen my story about not having anywhere to stay for the night and busses were done for the way back to Muskoka and got to stay with her. A lot of the homeless I met at the park weren’t addicts just got dealt a bad hand and had nowhere else to go, this was back in 2020. I’ve recently stayed at the Alexandra hotel this past summer for the exhibition and smashing pumpkins concert and it’s just the same as before. Heartbreaking the stories you hear but a very welcoming hotel and great what they do for the less fortunate.

That man is right. It’s all a political scam. They knew what would happen and the money they could generate. Living in Toronto for 24 years, I saw the difference happening before my eyes. This country has fallen in shambles beneath a leader who has failed.

I live in the East end of Toronto and I am scared to go downtown. Definitely not like it was before Trudeau.

I've lived in both Toronto and Vancouver. Vancouver is far far worse. Not even close.

Its not just toronto. The increase of immigrants has made it impossible to afford rent or even find somewhere to live.. Saving up for a house? Good luck. Trudeau has ruined this country and its disgusting

Getting ill causing a month long stay in the ICU left me homeless as living paycheck to paycheck causes once the cheques stop , I was placed in a Toronto homeless shelter 3 years ago and I can tell you that African refugees enter a shelter and no more than 3 weeks later are housed usually 5 at a time all Getting a fully paid market value 1 bedroom apartment average price $2,600 monthly that with a monthly welfare cheque and free food dental medical prescriptions clothing WIN WIN WIN the Canadian born homeless shelter residents get put on a 38,000 name waiting list for Ontario's drug infested housing ghettos the Africans are being housed under a kept secret program called COHB secret from us Canadian homeless that is and I've witnessed this now at 5 different shelters I've been in, having befriended one of the African migrants who is a little unstable drinking alcohol and smoking pot so he hasn't been housed but he has shown me the paper work that has been housing his fellow illegal immigrants and I say illegal because they all came as visitors only to claim asylum as soon as they land he also told me they all borrow the money for their plane tickets from a gang who once they land and start instantly getting welfare have to send half the proceeds back to this gang in Africa for the next two years , in this shelter donated clothing comes in everyday and two African shelter residents fold and sort the clothing taking all the name brand clothes what they didn't hand out to the other Africans they walk to the post office and ship it back to Africa I'm not making this shit up after we complained to staff which also happen to be made up from the Africans themselves yes they've hired wolves to watch over the other wolves so they now aren't walking out the front door everyday with garbage bags full of clothes at least not in front of our eyes DON'T CALL ME RACIST I know that's the go to word when this insanity is made public , what do you think is the first thing these Africans do when they walk into their free apartment? Make phone calls back to the friends they left in Africa saying Get on the next plane to Canada free apartment free food free clothing free medication free dental and free money every month Canadians need not apply

My parents threw me out when i was 15 so in 1998 and i was living in bus shelters in Toronto and under tarps and i was the only person doing it then lol, i remember seeing drug addicts talking to themselves or trying to stab me lol but it was rare like 1 here or there. Anyway i have kids now, am 40, and living a great life, i wish everyone all the best, you can do it! Things will get better even if you can't see how right now ❤