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Regent Park, built in the 1940 to provide affordable housing, is undergoing a massive revitalization and will be transformed into a mixed income community. Despite the doubling of the resident population, no additional public housing units will be built. Yet there are over 100,000 on the waiting list for affordable housing in Toronto. According to Homelessness Hub, approximately 35,000 Canadians experience homelessness nightly. Additionally, a significant number of Canadians, especially Indigenous people, live in substandard homes that are overcrowded and/or dilapidated. Even Canadians that are lucky enough to have housing struggle to afford their homes and are at risk of becoming homeless if they lose their jobs. This situation is exacerbated by an expensive housing and rental market and insufficient access to affordable housing. Although Canada has signed on to many international treaties that signify access to adequate housing as a human right, this is still a major issue in our cou

With everyone forced to stay inside, what is the fate of the homeless, and those living in shelters or on the street? Regent Park located just east of Toronto's downtown core is undergoing a major revitalization, it is being transformed from a neighbourhood made up solely of public housing, most of which were buildings over 50 years old, to a multi-use, mixed income community. Despite these changes, the areas surrounding Regent Park, which included Moss Park, Cabbage Town, St Jamestown, and the Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, have had large populations of low income, homeless and street people. To meet the needs of these populations, the area also has the highest concentration of social service agencies, shelters and drop-ins. It is estimated that there are over 9,200 people in Toronto who maybe homeless at any one time. Shelters and drop-ins provide essential services to these populations, food, clothing, medical and mental health supports, and places where people can socializ

Over the past 15 years Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood has been going through the process of revitalization. Regent Park, once a neighbourhood made up solely of public housing, most of which were buildings over 50 years old, is being transformed into a multi-use, mixed income community. Although on the surface this is a needed change, there is much concern that the Regent Park revitalization will echo the processes of gentrification that many Toronto neighbourhoods have gone through over the last few decades. Gentrification is the process of updating and beautifying a community which on the surface sounds positive, however it unfortunately leads to increases to the cost of living and high housing costs. This in turn leads to an influx of wealthy neighbours while many of the original residents end up being displaced because they are no longer able to afford the cost of living in their community.  A strong argument can be made that the Regent Park revitalization has thus far avoided

8 July 2020 Focus Media Arts Centre Chloё Nguyen-Drury The COVID-19 virus, also known as Coronavirus, has changed every aspect of our lives. What originated as a small cluster of cases in Wuhan, China, has quickly spread worldwide. On 11 March 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic (World Health Organization 2020). In this hyper-connected world, global travel has played a significant role in the spread of the virus. Infected persons visiting or returning to Canada have brought the disease to our backyard, leading to community spread (transmission from one community member to another). Additionally, Canadians who were travelling abroad have had difficulty returning home, as cancelled flights and travel restrictions limit residents from returning to their country. As of 8 July 2020, Canada has reported 106,434 cases, including 70,247 recovered and 8,737 fatalities. Ontario has reported 36,178 confirmed cases of COVID, the second-highest number in the country after Québec (Public H

RPTV News interviews Miguel Avilla-Vellarde a Regent Park resident, and community activist, who has been involved in ensuring community safety through improvement of CCTV surveillance cameras at 220 Oak Street a Toronto Community Housing (TCH) apartment building located in Regent Park, in the area of River and Oak Streets. Motivated by the history of violence at 220 Oak, a total of six incidents of violence leading to death since 2011, Miguel along with other residents have campaigned the City of Toronto and TCH to install security cameras. The TCH has rejected these efforts on the grounds that the cameras violate certain aspects of privacy legislation. This argument however has met with resistance from residents who cite that neighbouring TCH buildings do have security cameras. And while the immediate safety of residents at 220 Oak Street is a concern for all vested parties, the path to resolving the matter has been mired in the bureaucracies of both the TCH and the City of T

In Toronto there are around 3,000 laneways running throughout the city. Despite this only about 10% of these lanes are named. There are many reasons why naming of lanes can have many positive impacts on the surrounding neighbourhoods. As the Laneway Project highlighted, providing a name for a laneway can help emergency services reach the scene of emergency, preserve the history of an area, create a sense of place and identity, and bring the community together through the naming process. On June 20th 2019, Ismathara Ratna was struck by an impaired driver in the Regent Park community. The mother of three, was beloved by friends and family members in the community and many residents were devastated to hear the news of her passing. It was shortly after 1pm on a Thursday when Ratna, on her way to visit a friend after dropping her kids off at school, was struck by the impaired driver who lost control of his vehicle and mounted the sidewalk where Ratna was standing. This tragic death has left

Robert Nesta “Bob” Marley sang; “One good thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain.” Music has always played a very important role in the lives of Africans. As we are in June, Black Music Month it is time to remember that the popular music we hear today owes much to Africans. June has been recognized as “Black Music Month” since 1979 when President Jimmy Carter designated June as Black Music Month after being persuaded by Black Music Association founders Kenneth Gamble and Ed Wright. Music (singing, drumming, dancing) was an important part of African culture and was probably one of the few joys in the lives of enslaved Africans. Enslaved Africans were forbidden the joy of playing drums but expressed their creativity by singing and dancing. Music served to lift their spirits as they toiled in the fields, sometimes waist deep in mud, doing the backbreaking work that enriched the white families that held them in captivity. There has been much written about the role the spirituals

Recently, the Ford government announced that schools would remain closed until September. While we agree that the safety of our children must be paramount, the impacts of school closures are not borne equally by all families. Indeed, for immigrant families who were already suffering under the Ford government’s cuts prior to the pandemic, any return to “business-as-usual” would only increase suffering. Immigrant families have already been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 and public health measures. In fact, a recent study in Toronto shows how racialized, low income and recent immigrant neighbourhoods had the highest cases of COVID-19, suggesting that the pandemic is intensifying pre-existing inequalities faced by marginalized groups. Recent research has shown that immigrant parents are at elevated risk of emotional problems compared with other immigrants who are not parents. Inequities in language instruction are one of the systemic issues that immigrant parents must cope with. I

In the world of comics, keeping alive the past is just as important as making way for the new. The Canada Comics Open Library (CCOL), located in Regent Park in the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), at the Daniels Spectrum building, is a novel undertaking combining both traditional and innovative approaches to comics, their presentation, preservation, and promotion. In the world of comics, keeping alive the past is just as important as making way for the new. While the past may have been characterised by male dominated worldview, the present and the future are anything but that. In what is commonly known as the Golden Age of comics (the 1930s and 1940s in the US), a pantheon of superheroes Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Captain America, and Wonder Woman, is conjured up to save the lot of mankind, from say, the devastation of the Great Depression. Parallel to this, and no less important, in Europe and in Japan for instance, comics are also flourishing, TinTin, Asterix, Manga and Anime em

Regent Park has long been recognized as one of the lower-income neighbourhoods in the downtown Toronto area. There is a higher representation of visible minorities, refugees, immigrants and Aboriginal people in the neighbourhood compared to neighboring areas. The average income for Regent Park residents is approximately half the average for other Torontonians. However, the residents of Regent Park are not alone. There is currently close to two million Canadians in Ontario are facing poverty and/or are categorized as low income. In fact, Ontario has one of the worst poverty rates in Canada, which causes a lot of hardship for children and families in this country. One proposed solution for addressing this problem is the idea of a basic income. But what exactly is a basic income? According to the Basic Income Earth Network, basic income is defined as an unconditional periodic cash payment made to individuals. In March 2016, Ontario Budget, Kathleen Wynne’s provincial government commi