By Alex Balch

According to the Toronto Star, I live in the worst neighbourhood in the city.

This past April, in an innocuously titled article “Dundas-Sherbourne poised for a surprising rebirth”, The Star's Robyn Doolittle pointed out that Toronto's downtown eastside “consistently tops every major Toronto police crime indictor list” — routinely beating the more notorious neighbourhoods of Jane and Finch, Rogers and Keele and Weston and Lawrence.

In the article Doolittle rightly — albeit disingenuously — attributes the area's high levels of criminality to its heavy concentration of poverty:

By Frank Liberto

Recently, gentrification has emerged as an issue in Hamilton, where political attacks have been waged on sex workers in the form of reactionary public meetings. Some civic boosters and members of the burgeoning downtown art colony and have engaged in a hostile rhetoric toward the poor and homeless.

In response, many social justice activists have begun to mobilize anti-gentrification struggles. Reaction to an art exhibit that exploited outdoor sex workers has evolved into an anti-gentrification group called HAND – Hamiltonians Against Neighbourhood Displacement.