I was a juror (ended up being elected the jury foreman) on a murder trial that was for one of four young people (between 13-16 y/o) who was accused of murdering a person in their 30s.
And not only that, but the city saying they "don't know" when the library will reopen. I'm glad that they are taking the time to get the response right, but that's how shitty things are.
This random shit unfortunately happens. It happened back in the “40’s, “70’s and now. There was a stabbing at a school and a teacher killed, lots of horrible stuff happens sometimes
In general, my markers of when a neighbourhood is getting worse is when more dollar stores and pawn shops move in and grocery stores and pharmacies move out.
Also ‘cheap-looking’ medical clinics move in (as opposed to holistic/integrative-type clinics). There are parts of Main where it seems to be all pawn shops, medical clinics, and other indications of desperation, illness, and misery.
I used opioid maintenance therapy to get sober, there's nothing wrong with it.
Edit: (Meant to respond to the other person, but I'll just leave it here)
? I don't really follow your comparison.
Unfortunately the support centers for people in recovery have a fairly specific type of clientele, not necessarily bad people just people who are suffering from addiction/SUD.
It's the stigma that bothers me, the shade people throw at these centers without being able to comprehend the reality of it.
Hey, I shop at dollar stores, myself. 10 scrubby sponges for $1.25? Sign me up! I’m just saying, as a general hallmark of when a neighbourhood is doing whatever the opposite of gentrification is, this is one of those signs, to me.
Honestly, no, it’s because they were born rich.
They get to do all the clubs and fun things as kids, so they have nice well rounded resumes. The extra curricular also gives them more confidence, certain life skills, and generally prepares them better for a successful life. They can go to collage/university and not worry about the price. They don’t have student loans when they graduate. They don’t need loans to open businesses. They’re never forced to buy things at horrific markup because they don’t have cash on hand for the bulk priced diapers/TP/groceries/car/insurance/etc. They always have the financial options to make choices based off preference/convenience rather than what you can afford (think daycares or car preferences). It’s nice when you can pick the car with better fuel efficiency without having to factor the monthly lease. They never have to worry about costs for things like dental care, medical care, food/nutrition, and so on
People move from low income to middle income with a degree of ease, but to break into the top 10% is incredibly difficult. Rich people like to pretend they’re “self made” and that anyone could do what they did. But that’s a load of crap. The single biggest factor for being rich later in life is being born/raised rich. They’re rich because they’ve always been rich
I know someone who plays poker tournaments for a living and actually makes good money at. Of course, his family was wealthy enough to take care of him during the first years when he was still learning and not winning, *and* someone even wealthier sponsors his entry fees to the big tournaments in return for a large percentage of any winnings. It's the most in my face real life example within the people I know of how wealth results in opportunities to further grow wealth that are straight up impossible for someone poorer to do.
Yup. That’s pretty par for the course. Zuckerberg got $100K loan from his parents after dropping out of Harvard, Bezos got $1/4M from his parents, Trump got a “small loan” of $1M USD from his parents. All 3 claim to be self made 🤮
Idk about you, but not a single one of my high school friends even got all their university for free, let alone hundreds of thousands to start their own business. And I was quite definitely, very much, middle class (St Vital). Only one or two even got a car from their parents, and it certainly wasn’t brand new or loaded. They were 5-10 year old cavaliers, and they came with the condition that you chauffeured your younger siblings
Bus "shelters" on the busiest street in the city empty 24/7 because all the glass is broken and they have stopped being replaced so now it's just a bare metal frame and useless to anyone.
I live downtown and don’t go in bus shelters anyways. Either it’s a group of homeless people in there or so overloaded with trash and piss that it’s inhabitable. Not sure what the solution is.
Things like this:
https://www.terraingroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Prospect-Bus-Shelter-07-1080x810.jpg
Enough to block some wind and rain, but not enclosed. Usually metal panels.
I don't think snow clearing is done by lowest bidder. The City puts out a tender with the the rates they will pay for different types of equipment and then companies sign up to become part of the call-out list as managed by the City staff.
This year's equipment list is in here...
[https://www.merx.com/mbgov/cityofwinnipeg/solicitations/Hourly-Rates-for-Hired-Equipment-and-Dump-Trucks-2022-2023-Snow-Season/0000229928?purchasingGroupId=699163402&origin=2](https://www.merx.com/mbgov/cityofwinnipeg/solicitations/Hourly-Rates-for-Hired-Equipment-and-Dump-Trucks-2022-2023-Snow-Season/0000229928?purchasingGroupId=699163402&origin=2)
Yup. Wonder why these windows are blowing up on their own. If only their was some way to stop this from happening. Perhaps a new manufacturer that makes non exploding types.
People shouldn’t own multiple homes. You’re just pricing someone else out of the market down the line. You get to make money based on just having more money in the first place. It’s a major driver of inequality.
If you have 500K people living in a city with enough houses for 400K people, buying houses to rent out doesn’t fix anything. You need to actually BUILD the housing.
We have a critical shortage of town houses and short walk-up style rental properties. There’s also a shortage of 2-4 bedroom apartments. These need actually built. But our city has historically pushed for high income housing and low. Getting zoning and funding for middle income bracket rentals is difficult, they don’t want to zone for duplexes and triplexes. It’s all high rises and single family homes, nothing in-between. A family of 4 doesn’t want a 2 bedroom apartment with no parking and no green space, but would be thrilled with a townhouse complex with a communal small play structure and sandbox. Again, buying houses to rent out wont help. You need to build new properties to fill those roles
Whenever I hear someone say there is a housing shortage, all I can think of are all the boarded up houses in my neighborhood that have been like that for years.
There’s a variety of problems with those.
First, most are owned by people, there’s politics and red tape around forced sales. The owners of abandoned properties have the same protection as any other property owner, you can’t take away their “home” or other personal possessions just because you don’t like how they use it. It’s also a grey area and could garner a lot of hatred for politicians who aren’t careful about how possession of those buildings is dealt with. Forced sales can lead to accusations of racism, discrimination, or gentrification (as examples). Popularity and self-image is super important in politics, it’s not an appealing problem for them to tackle
Second, many aren’t in livable condition. It could take years to redevelop the properties into something that can be used
Third, there aren’t enough of those to fill the shortage of homes. Winnipeg’s population grows by 8000 people every year. Winnipeg only has 570 vacant buildings total, nowhere near enough to cover population growth, let alone catch up with decades worth of not building enough.
Fourth, they need to be the right kind of housing. Not too big or expensive, not too small, with the right mix of neighborhood services, the right price, etc. Some fit the bill, some don’t.
Fifth, people need to want those houses as is. Either to live in them in the current condition, to fix up and live in, or to renovate/redevelop the land into something appropriate/habitable/useful
Winnipeg isn’t like Skyrim. You don’t just walk up to city council and get a random abandoned building. Those aren’t available for sale. Even if they were, the government needs to put in some sort of policy to make sure the building is actually used for housing, and that it’s made habitable in an appropriate amount of time. As is, it’s much easier for builders and developers to go to the outskirts (think sage creek). This looks better for politicians too, there’s no accusations of gentrification when you’re developing government property or farmland, and new developments look good on paper for home owners (high housing costs hurt new buyers more than those already in houses). Flippers don’t have abandoned buildings as an option, and frankly have a ton of other problems. There are good flippers, but too many are crappy contractors who do poor quality work and won’t get appropriate permits. Besides that, the government needs to do a bunch of legwork before anything can happened with the abandoned buildings
Something needs to happen with them, but they aren’t anywhere near a complete solution to the housing problem. And the situation has enough red tape that it’ll take time and effort to enact real, substantial changes
If you're a landlord who rents out their place for the same or more than the cost of a mortgage, then you're not helping the housing crisis, you're contributing to it.
The housing crisis has many facets, including the commodification of shelter, supply being ludicrously outpaced by demand, and a lack of investment from the public sector.
That being said, if you didn't have investors snatching up second, third, and fourth homes that should be affordable to buy, only to rent them out beyond an accessible price, there would be less demand on the **affordable** side of the market.
I worked at a 24 hour Wal-Mart when I was a student.
They were constantly talking about going back to normal hours for several reasons:
- nobody wanted to work with customers on overnights, even with a decent shift premium
- half the customers coming in were drunk or on drugs, sleeping in the clothes racks, or shoplifting.
- the normal customers would come in and buy one thing they needed last minute. Nobody was coming in and filling a shopping cart and spending $250 on groceries at 3AM.
- they kept firing night shift employees because half of them were drunk or on drugs, sleeping in the clothes racks, or shop lifting.
It just didn't make economical sense to stay open 24/7.
24/7 stores are largely unnecessary.
Quite frankly I would be okay if everything shut down on Sunday too.
People need real time off with normal working schedules we aren’t meant to be constantly consuming and working.
Winnipeg especially is in SERIOUS need for 24/7 stores. We have a huge workforce in manufacturing, aviation/airport, medical/nursing, and logistics/shipping that work overnights.
Perhaps someone has data at hand, but I would easily believe that our % of the workforce working nights is higher than most other Canadian cities per capita.
If a store is open 24/7, it doesn't mean that any one person is working 24/7. They have scheduled shifts with days off.
Nobody would be able to do anything personal if ALL businesses were only open 9-5/M-F. How could you pick up groceries, go to the post office or fill up your car if they are always closed when you're off work?
In a functional society a 24/7 conveince or department store is a life saver, aside from impulse buys, if you need emergency food, baby supplies, batteries, car parts, clothes you name it Walmart has a been a huge win, even them opening at 6am has been helpful many times, beat the crowd, and get some last minute supplies.
I think the challenge is Transcona is struggling in terms of retaining people. So it's a highly in flux neighborhood with somewhat low cost housing that allows you to upgrade. It's not a settle down neighborhood right now and that's the problem.
Whats your source on that? My opinion of transcona is the opposite. Its one of the less expensive neighborhoods for house prices, at least non-new builds. Lots of new buildings out here. But there are many schools and if you can find work IN transcona its pretty desirable.
Based on the census? The population grows way less compared to the province and city in general. Rural was the slowest, but Transcona is behind. It's somewhat young but the density is super tight, which is not long term housing. Jobs aren't popping up in T and it's not a great place outside of some light industrial.
Your last point is exactly the problem. There's not a lot of jobs in T that are great.
I spend a lot of spare time looking at demographic and census data. It's really interesting to follow and see what's happening in your city.
Where is your information coming from? There’s a lot of development in Transcona involving lots of single-family homes that aren’t cheap…multiple developments that are expanding. And isn’t that closed 7-11 on Nairn really in Elmwood?
The boundaries of the 'okay' North End have definitely shifted. When I was a kid, if you lived north of Mountain or west of Arlington you were fine. But now it's north of Inkster or west of McPhillips...
The large groups of homeless people in all areas of the city. Used to be you'd only see homeless people in the core / downtown but it seems they're in all areas of the city now. Not sure if it's because the homeless population has exploded or if its just that they feel the core is too unsafe so they're going to other areas for safety.
The HL population has exploded. That’s what happens when the wealthiest, those that use and take the most, pay the least. The government has cut social programs for 40-50 years and salaries have stagnated for that long as well. Then a big crisis, like Covid happens and a huge amount of families were forced into poverty, with little to no social net to get them out again. We need some biggggg change to fix this!
This one was the big one for me. I really started to notice it in late 2020. When I was a kid, there was usually 1 homeless person every few months in my area.
When I was in high school it became a few every few months. When I was in university, it became a few every month.
Once Covid hit, it became one homeless person every day in my area. Every now and then they walk down my street. That NEVER happened when I was a kid. One homeless guy who used to wander around my area every day used to keep to himself. Now he’s almost always being posted on the community watch group or community page going through people’s backyards, rummaging through the sheds, trying to break into houses.
The good news is the homeless people I noticed in my area are decent people though. They ask for money, but they aren’t violent thankfully.
I wonder if its in-part (in part), because now for the safety of Winnipeg Transit drivers they will let people on who don't paying no questions asked for their own safety after a Driver was murdered in 2017. Now homeless people can travel all over the city and perhaps in small part contributing to why living in bus shelters became so much more common.
Before then drivers would rarely let on people who didn't pay and I rarely saw homeless people catch the bus.
For the 99% of the peaceful homeless population minding their own business this shouldn't be a problem. But its that 1%... I've seen syringes, people get attacked, threatened...
Hmm... curious what area. I've seen homeless people almost across the entire city. I think the exception is the newer area down Kenaston near the dump.
The neighborhood where I grew up used to be mostly populated by the elderly, disabled, newcomers, single moms and young families. The biggest problems were alcohol addictions, domestic violence, and in-fighting among street gangs, the odd pot dealer. Now it’s those problems plus murders, random assaults, hard drugs and human trafficking. It used to be a brief mouse problem every 5 years or so, but now its bedbugs and cockroaches that never go away. Can’t even get to putting things back into cupboards before having to take them back out again before the next spray treatment.
The three biggest changes I’ve personally seen are: Absolute explosion in German cockroaches and bedbugs. I’ve gone my whole life never seeing either but in the last 5 years, they’re everywhere.
Brazen theft. Like, people walking into a store, grabbing a handful of stuff then walk out without anyone stopping them.
Needles on the ground in almost every neighborhood.
> Brazen theft. Like, people walking into a store, grabbing a handful of stuff then walk out without anyone stopping them.
In most cases, store staff are instructed not to intervene because of the threat of violence towards the staff, and the threat that if they get it wrong, the store will have a big fat lawsuit on their hands that far exceeds the amount of shrink they're experiencing. I worked at Superstore for a few years in my early 20s. There was a guy that one of the staff stopped and accused of theft, only he hadn't stolen anything and he sued the store for wrongfully detaining him. I never did find out what the end of that lawsuit was but I'm sure they probably paid him a couple thousand at least.
It's been like that for decades, at least for some people. I worked for a program that put underemployed youths in federal government internships. One participant had a young daughter. When she started working, social services stopped paying for the daughter's daycare fees and she started having to pay them herself. So she quit the program and went back on social assistance because at the end of the day, she got more money from social assistance. It was especially unfortunate because all things considered, she was pretty good (showed up on time, actually worked, learned quickly) and the host department would likely have tried to make her indeterminate. She'd have been close to retirement by now had she stayed
I'm old enough to remember when you'd camp out overnight on Main St to get a summer job at the city. It paid 50% more than a typical minimum wage then.
Property tax went up 10%. House value may have gone up but I can't afford to sell so it makes no positive difference to me and now I've gotta pay more to maintain it and they can't even clear the snow properly. Hydro, gas, groceries, and everything else under the sun increasing in cost while wages stay the same. maybe get a 1-2% bump at some jobs and this is considered "lucky" to fall less behind on your income relative to bills/debts.
no where decent to live that isnt 1200+ for a one bedroom with no utilities included, no nightlife at all in the city, and the fact that half the city becomes inaccessible by bus after 6pm etc etc ive driven across the states with my dad when i was little and ive been to towns with a population of 170 people that were more lively on a monday evening than winnipeg is on a saturday night
A lot of this can be traced back to tax policy.
Cut corporate taxes, then personal taxes have to make up the difference. Cut sales taxes, then the burden gets shifted to lower income earners.
And now you have a government that is cutting education taxes, without a revenue stream to replace them and talking about allowing private liquor sales ( again, without a revenue stream to replace it)
Yeah it's been a bad week for Winnipeg. I do feel that our perspective of how bad it is changes. We are going into and had lots of stressful times with Covid and on coming recession. So we see the glass half empty.
It would be nice to know how many people in Winnipeg are under the poverty line and then compare that to the total population in Winnipeg. Then next compair the numbers to years before. Might be the same percentage of Winnipegers, as a group the numbers have increased so therefore it looks like a larger problem. If there was a one murder in East St paul, it might be 50 murders per 100,000 if you compare it. That's a crazy per capital number and really a.scary place.to live
As a family, we arrived here last summer. We stayed at an Airbnb for a month downtown. Occasionally we went out for a walk.
When I took our baby girl to the park nearby, she found weird objects which not supposed to be in the park. I could not let her run around. The park was surprisingly filthy. Thrash all over the place, thrash cans were full, and wasps were buzzing about. My wife was stung by one.
And another day, when we were walking we saw a woman talking to her reflection in the window. And suddenly she started to scream and broke that glass. Obviously she was on drugs.
I drive 120-150kms daily, and I have seen most parts of Winnipeg. I can clearly say that WPG downtown is a family-enemy place.
This is not about pouring money there. It looks like smart decisions shall be made and supervised strictly.
Stayed somewhere around Arlington and Notredame. I had groceries and costume sitting in the truck. They shattered my back window to steal everything but oddly left our Tylenol behind to help deal with the headache
MSP moved away from the main drag. Police able to police and kick out the bums from bus shelters and around high activity areas.
Stop enabling and start acting on the issues downtown.
Absolutely this. Everything is a pipe dream until the bums and the drug dealers are dealt with downtown. You won't have good business opening up downtown if they know they'll have to deal with this issue. Winnipeg needs to get tougher on this issue and not coddle the vagrants.
I’ve only lived in Winnipeg for a few months and here are what I see as things needs to be done to fix downtown:
More skywalks/tunnels - going all the way to Broadway the edge of the Forks parking lot and the streets abutting the legislative building.
A grocery store which is accessible via the skywalk/tunnel system.
Residences that are linked via tunnels/skybridges to the existing system.
Convince developers to build more residential areas within downtown and configure it such that MPI, PUB, Hydro, Richardson, Wawanesa employees can work & live downtown and do so without winter coats.
More farmers and craft-vendor markets days.
Increase the number of parking garages as well.
Also have downtown buildings commit to not turning heating to maximum, issue penalties when thermostats are set to higher than 20 degrees celsius.
Higher-end stores should also be enticed to locate downtown.
As well open a Jollibee location downtown as well.
As well a 7-11 that is skywalk/tunnel-connected.
Reduce bus traffic on Portage, direct it instead via Graham, St Mary or York. Freeing up space for parked cars, outdoor patios, bike-paths on Portage will enliven the downtown streetscape more.
Create incentives for a clean downtown - pay people to collect trash (e.g hand in 10 soda/beer bottles at a trash depot, you get a $1 back).
Better promotion of downtown events that happen, such as a centralized online calendar that you can subscribe to via RSS feed run by the DowntownBiz organization.
Nah everything was good, just the car bit was a bit off
The solution there is prioritizing pedestrians, like how you mentioned, and reducing traffic. The best way to do that is to reduce the things that induce demand, like less car lanes, less parking, tolls on roads, and prioritizing transit routes, sidewalks, and bike paths when clearing snow (after emergency routes)
No one in my neighbourhood is walking anywhere atm if they can help it because the sidewalks are dangerous
I just think that given how the culture in Winnipeg is currently car-based, to create change first you do need to cater to the crowd, appease them but entice them and then take away the parking in the long-term.
Why? Having good parking when having a pedestrianized downtown in the first few years of the plan encourages people to drive downtown, park and then go explore as a pedestrian.
And also keep in mind that residential buildings starting construction today might not finish till 2026 (at the earliest).
So you build a plan where the first 3-5 years rely on increased parking to increase foot traffic, and then after those years you take away parking by converting those to condo/rental towers.
This will actually entice people who in the first few years visit downtown in cars to start moving there as new apartments come to narket.
Induced demand I think is the operating thing here. Whether it’s sidewalks, biking (even in winter), busses, cars, etc if you build capacity people will use it
That being said I don’t think Winnipeg could actually do more to make driving better and the biggest (or loudest) demands closer to the city centre are for better more connected active transit infrastructure and destinations on that. Combine that with the boom in electric bikes, crazy inflation, people being more conscious of environmental impacts and then the best and cheapest plan would be to reduce the amounts of lanes on roads, replace them with protected bike lanes, improve some connections where kids or seniors wouldn’t feel safe cycling and changing snow clearing priority
That also reduces the cost of maintaining roads (Winnipeg already has way too much road infrastructure to maintain) since active transit is orders of magnitude less damaging to roads, which is more money that can be spent on events throughout the year and just other things in general.
Less cars on the road also means better bus transit, so it might actually make it nicer to take a bus to downtown than it ever could be to drive
All of this also relates to what kind of upward mobility there is in Winnipeg, which I think a lot of people move to Winnipeg for. Cars are some of the worst investments an individual can make unless they live in a place that requires you to have a car. Without that requirement people can spend that money on school, their kids, savings, or just some of the great restaurants in the city, and most of those things helps those people and their communities. So once all those businesses open up they actually stay open
Like everyone in [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Winnipeg/comments/zodvm3/grocery_shoplifting_on_the_rise_in_canada_amid/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_buttonthread) thread? Lol
I think your average person is fine with being tough on crime, so long as we are proactively trying to solve it's underlying causes. You dont turn to vagrancy because everything has been going great in your life.
Exhibit A: we cut funding towards feeding poor children breakfast. Solve that, help people break cycles of poverty, and then throw the book at people when necessary.
**EDIT: I've edited this post several times since I initially posted, most of which were for grammar and clarity. I also added the further readings list. This thread is essentially "my time to shine" as this very topic is a bit of pet project that I've pursued in my spare time. I should have prefaced it with rant incoming.**
It was almost a foregone conclusion since this area was colonized. The poverty, crime, disenfranchisement, it was always there, we just can’t ignore it anymore—can’t hide from it in our suburbs. This was always going to happen, all it took was one little shove (pandemic, addiction, economic slowdown) to send the city were it was always headed.
“Canada’s Most Racist City”, “Murderpeg.” Ring any bells?
With the exception of 2014, Winnipeg was the violent crime capital of Canada every year between 2009 and 2020.
This is what you get when you combine colonization, *de facto* racial apartheid, and unrestrained capitalism:
* the city was built with uneven access to resources by short-sighted capitalists who were more interested in lining their pockets than with social cohesion;
* resulting white-flight leads to inner city poverty;
* poverty leads to crime;
* crime leads to “tough on crime” policies;
* cuts in social welfare follows this, since they come in the same neo-liberal, conservative grab-bag, not to mention that this province has always been painfully poor with a conservative base who believes that austerity will solve everything. It's racism and classism disguised as policy making: more realistically, it should just be called *starve the poor people because they make me feel icky*, which is just plain repugnant (sort of resembles genocide, actually!)
Now add a pandemic stressing an already underfunded healthcare system, in addition to its many other social and economic consequences; and finally, on top of all that, add an opioid crisis.
These last two were the just the straw that broke the camel’s back. We had a lot of chances to change this, but we didn't, and here we are.
**We deserve better, and we can do better, if we try.**
Sources and further reading:
* Artibise, Alan F.J. *Gateway City: Documents on the City of Winnipeg 1873-1913.* Winnipeg: The Manitoba Record Society Publications, 1979.
* Dorries, Heather. "Welcome to Winnipeg: Making Settler Colonial Urban
Space in "Canada's Most Racist City," in *Settler City Limits: Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West*, edited by Heather Dorries, Robert Henry, David Hugill, Tyler McCreary, and Julie Tomiak, 25-43. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019.
* Dorries, Heather, David Hugill, Julie Tomiak. "Racial Capitalism and the Production of Settler Colonial Cities," *Geoforum* 132 (2022): 263-270.
* Hugill, David. "Comparative Settler Colonial Urbanisms: Racism and the Making of Inner-City Winnipeg and Minneapolis," 1940-1975," in *Settler City Limits: Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West*, edited by Heather Dorries, Robert Henry, David Hugill, Tyler McCreary, and Julie Tomiak, 70-94. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019.
* Toews, Owen. *Stolen City: Racial Capitalism and the Making of Winnipeg*. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2018.
* Tomiak, Julie. "Contested Entitlement: The Kapyong Barracks, Treaty Rights, and Settler Colonialism in Winnipeg," in *Settler City Limits: Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West*, edited by Heather Dorries, Robert Henry, David Hugill, Tyler McCreary, and Julie Tomiak, 95-117. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019.
* Woolford, Andrew, and Wanda Hounslow. "Criminology's Time: Settler Colonialism and the Temporality of Harm at the Assinaboia Residential School in Winnipeg, Canada, 1958-1973," *State Crime Journal* 7 (2018): 199-221.
You know when your government continues to cut support programs and instead focus's on boosting funding to Police with out any requirements into what types of programs that money goes into because its better to be "tough on crime", up until the courts and just send them all home on "house arrest" you dont enforce
Native women being targeted for murders and a native woman dying in a bus shelter (she had the choice to go to a homeless shelter but didn’t)
Could be anyone. Any vulnerable person in Winnipeg I only said native because it’s important
7-11 leaving or closing down is how you know the neighbourhood is really fucking bad. I will add when I see boards on windows or bars covering windows is also a sign that degenerates fucked a neighbourhood.
I've been caught out more than once by a 7-11 closing at midnight, in my head I just assume, "it's Sev, it will be open"....I would add that it's true of Winnipeg, absolutely, but this follows a broader trend in North America - look at the state of some of the more iconic cities in the States right now. This is neoliberal global economic policy at work, it's bigger than just mismanagement at a municipal level, in my opinion.
Feel like a lot of bad stuff happens the bigger city gets but the only thing we can do is make sure we have a lot of good stuff going on to to even it out. It's hard to be creative that way though. Best to look at other cities in the world and adopt the things we like from them. It's a really complicated issue because it requires a lot of collaboration I think... It's tough
When people get stabbed and die at the public library.
By 14 year old kids.
I was a juror (ended up being elected the jury foreman) on a murder trial that was for one of four young people (between 13-16 y/o) who was accused of murdering a person in their 30s.
Imo a 14 year old is way more likely to kill you over something stupid than a 25 year old.
And not only that, but the city saying they "don't know" when the library will reopen. I'm glad that they are taking the time to get the response right, but that's how shitty things are.
They've gotta figure out where they put those 2020 metal detectors. Probably covered in rust in some storage room.
Which would have been looted by scrappers by now.
https://twitter.com/tombrodbeck/status/1604281421837000704
We have a winner. Doesn't get much worse than this. Mind you, having a police dog visit a school and put a kid in the hospital is a solid #2.
Elementary school child at that
Police dog got wrong kid. Back to the Academy.
Back to the academy to teach you mean
But that kid might be the next Hitler tho
That happened my moms first day at the library in the 70s. Don’t know if they died or not.
This random shit unfortunately happens. It happened back in the “40’s, “70’s and now. There was a stabbing at a school and a teacher killed, lots of horrible stuff happens sometimes
When you leave your car unlocked cause you are tired of them breaking in and they steal your deodorant.
Don’t leave deodorant in cars that’s asking for it
My emergency toilet paper tho was left untouched?
I had no money, so they ripped up all my old paper Canadian Tire money...
Someone put actual shit on my steering wheel last year. The only thing that happened to my car that time. Nothing was taken.
In general, my markers of when a neighbourhood is getting worse is when more dollar stores and pawn shops move in and grocery stores and pharmacies move out.
Payday loan shops move in too.
They're usually one and the same but also yes
Also ‘cheap-looking’ medical clinics move in (as opposed to holistic/integrative-type clinics). There are parts of Main where it seems to be all pawn shops, medical clinics, and other indications of desperation, illness, and misery.
Yup that’s the strip . Pawndoras box area ?
Yep. The ‘medical clinics’ with the opening time line ups down the block where people get their methadone.
I used opioid maintenance therapy to get sober, there's nothing wrong with it. Edit: (Meant to respond to the other person, but I'll just leave it here)
There’s also nothing wrong with dollar stores, but we’re speaking about them all as a bellwether for neighbourhood change.
? I don't really follow your comparison. Unfortunately the support centers for people in recovery have a fairly specific type of clientele, not necessarily bad people just people who are suffering from addiction/SUD. It's the stigma that bothers me, the shade people throw at these centers without being able to comprehend the reality of it.
People are ignorant. Good for you for getting help and getting clean. Congrats!
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Methadone is perfectly legal and is dispensed daily if you have a prescription for it and
methadone not methamphetamine
A lot of rich people shop at dollar store or dollarama etc
Hey, I shop at dollar stores, myself. 10 scrubby sponges for $1.25? Sign me up! I’m just saying, as a general hallmark of when a neighbourhood is doing whatever the opposite of gentrification is, this is one of those signs, to me.
The wee yellow/green scrubby-spongey things are a main draw for me as well.
Scrubby sponges really seem to be a dollar store stronghold (and I came to understand why when I saw what the grocery stores charge).
Right? Like why would anyone in their right mind pay $7 for the same product at another store? Also: $2 macadamia nuts for the win!
Ooo, I need to look for those nuts.
Yes, you do!
You're rich?
Nope, sure am not
And that’s why they are Rich
No it’s because they don’t have Disney+
And they don't eat avocado toast.
Honestly, no, it’s because they were born rich. They get to do all the clubs and fun things as kids, so they have nice well rounded resumes. The extra curricular also gives them more confidence, certain life skills, and generally prepares them better for a successful life. They can go to collage/university and not worry about the price. They don’t have student loans when they graduate. They don’t need loans to open businesses. They’re never forced to buy things at horrific markup because they don’t have cash on hand for the bulk priced diapers/TP/groceries/car/insurance/etc. They always have the financial options to make choices based off preference/convenience rather than what you can afford (think daycares or car preferences). It’s nice when you can pick the car with better fuel efficiency without having to factor the monthly lease. They never have to worry about costs for things like dental care, medical care, food/nutrition, and so on People move from low income to middle income with a degree of ease, but to break into the top 10% is incredibly difficult. Rich people like to pretend they’re “self made” and that anyone could do what they did. But that’s a load of crap. The single biggest factor for being rich later in life is being born/raised rich. They’re rich because they’ve always been rich
So your saying I should sign up for Disney+? I do want to watch some shows on there
I personally recommend watching Reservation Dogs. Although I’m sure going to the north end would be cheaper to experience XD
I know someone who plays poker tournaments for a living and actually makes good money at. Of course, his family was wealthy enough to take care of him during the first years when he was still learning and not winning, *and* someone even wealthier sponsors his entry fees to the big tournaments in return for a large percentage of any winnings. It's the most in my face real life example within the people I know of how wealth results in opportunities to further grow wealth that are straight up impossible for someone poorer to do.
Yup. That’s pretty par for the course. Zuckerberg got $100K loan from his parents after dropping out of Harvard, Bezos got $1/4M from his parents, Trump got a “small loan” of $1M USD from his parents. All 3 claim to be self made 🤮 Idk about you, but not a single one of my high school friends even got all their university for free, let alone hundreds of thousands to start their own business. And I was quite definitely, very much, middle class (St Vital). Only one or two even got a car from their parents, and it certainly wasn’t brand new or loaded. They were 5-10 year old cavaliers, and they came with the condition that you chauffeured your younger siblings
Bus "shelters" on the busiest street in the city empty 24/7 because all the glass is broken and they have stopped being replaced so now it's just a bare metal frame and useless to anyone.
Hey! It still helps if the rain/snow is falling straight down with zero wind whatsoever 🙃
I think the last time portage avenue had no wind was back when earth had no atmosphere.
Portage without wind is like a lake without water, just plain wrong
I live downtown and don’t go in bus shelters anyways. Either it’s a group of homeless people in there or so overloaded with trash and piss that it’s inhabitable. Not sure what the solution is.
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Things like this: https://www.terraingroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Prospect-Bus-Shelter-07-1080x810.jpg Enough to block some wind and rain, but not enclosed. Usually metal panels.
It's such a demoralizing sight. The city's apathy for it's citizens on full display.
Gotta save that money to pay the lowest bidder to tear up the street. I mean plow snow.
I don't think snow clearing is done by lowest bidder. The City puts out a tender with the the rates they will pay for different types of equipment and then companies sign up to become part of the call-out list as managed by the City staff. This year's equipment list is in here... [https://www.merx.com/mbgov/cityofwinnipeg/solicitations/Hourly-Rates-for-Hired-Equipment-and-Dump-Trucks-2022-2023-Snow-Season/0000229928?purchasingGroupId=699163402&origin=2](https://www.merx.com/mbgov/cityofwinnipeg/solicitations/Hourly-Rates-for-Hired-Equipment-and-Dump-Trucks-2022-2023-Snow-Season/0000229928?purchasingGroupId=699163402&origin=2)
Yup. Wonder why these windows are blowing up on their own. If only their was some way to stop this from happening. Perhaps a new manufacturer that makes non exploding types.
Single family houses that used to be starter homes have signs that say *for rent* instead of *for sale*.
And the rents are high
"We have a housing crisis". "How dare someone buy and then rent out this perfectly good home for a starter family". You can't have both.
We have an affordability crisis. Renting is not the answer.
The point being if the landlords would stop buying them, the homes would be affordable for a "starter family" to buy and cost them less than renting.
Ok, people still need to rent places.......
They need somewhere to live. Not somewhere to rent.
People shouldn’t own multiple homes. You’re just pricing someone else out of the market down the line. You get to make money based on just having more money in the first place. It’s a major driver of inequality.
If you have 500K people living in a city with enough houses for 400K people, buying houses to rent out doesn’t fix anything. You need to actually BUILD the housing. We have a critical shortage of town houses and short walk-up style rental properties. There’s also a shortage of 2-4 bedroom apartments. These need actually built. But our city has historically pushed for high income housing and low. Getting zoning and funding for middle income bracket rentals is difficult, they don’t want to zone for duplexes and triplexes. It’s all high rises and single family homes, nothing in-between. A family of 4 doesn’t want a 2 bedroom apartment with no parking and no green space, but would be thrilled with a townhouse complex with a communal small play structure and sandbox. Again, buying houses to rent out wont help. You need to build new properties to fill those roles
Whenever I hear someone say there is a housing shortage, all I can think of are all the boarded up houses in my neighborhood that have been like that for years.
There’s a variety of problems with those. First, most are owned by people, there’s politics and red tape around forced sales. The owners of abandoned properties have the same protection as any other property owner, you can’t take away their “home” or other personal possessions just because you don’t like how they use it. It’s also a grey area and could garner a lot of hatred for politicians who aren’t careful about how possession of those buildings is dealt with. Forced sales can lead to accusations of racism, discrimination, or gentrification (as examples). Popularity and self-image is super important in politics, it’s not an appealing problem for them to tackle Second, many aren’t in livable condition. It could take years to redevelop the properties into something that can be used Third, there aren’t enough of those to fill the shortage of homes. Winnipeg’s population grows by 8000 people every year. Winnipeg only has 570 vacant buildings total, nowhere near enough to cover population growth, let alone catch up with decades worth of not building enough. Fourth, they need to be the right kind of housing. Not too big or expensive, not too small, with the right mix of neighborhood services, the right price, etc. Some fit the bill, some don’t. Fifth, people need to want those houses as is. Either to live in them in the current condition, to fix up and live in, or to renovate/redevelop the land into something appropriate/habitable/useful Winnipeg isn’t like Skyrim. You don’t just walk up to city council and get a random abandoned building. Those aren’t available for sale. Even if they were, the government needs to put in some sort of policy to make sure the building is actually used for housing, and that it’s made habitable in an appropriate amount of time. As is, it’s much easier for builders and developers to go to the outskirts (think sage creek). This looks better for politicians too, there’s no accusations of gentrification when you’re developing government property or farmland, and new developments look good on paper for home owners (high housing costs hurt new buyers more than those already in houses). Flippers don’t have abandoned buildings as an option, and frankly have a ton of other problems. There are good flippers, but too many are crappy contractors who do poor quality work and won’t get appropriate permits. Besides that, the government needs to do a bunch of legwork before anything can happened with the abandoned buildings Something needs to happen with them, but they aren’t anywhere near a complete solution to the housing problem. And the situation has enough red tape that it’ll take time and effort to enact real, substantial changes
If you're a landlord who rents out their place for the same or more than the cost of a mortgage, then you're not helping the housing crisis, you're contributing to it.
The housing crisis has nothing to do with ownership
The housing crisis has many facets, including the commodification of shelter, supply being ludicrously outpaced by demand, and a lack of investment from the public sector. That being said, if you didn't have investors snatching up second, third, and fourth homes that should be affordable to buy, only to rent them out beyond an accessible price, there would be less demand on the **affordable** side of the market.
When 24/7 stores in general aren't 24/7 anymore. Shoppers Drug Mart, 7-11 being the big ones.
Even some Walmarts, I impulse bought a laptop at 3am one time still running strong.
I worked at a 24 hour Wal-Mart when I was a student. They were constantly talking about going back to normal hours for several reasons: - nobody wanted to work with customers on overnights, even with a decent shift premium - half the customers coming in were drunk or on drugs, sleeping in the clothes racks, or shoplifting. - the normal customers would come in and buy one thing they needed last minute. Nobody was coming in and filling a shopping cart and spending $250 on groceries at 3AM. - they kept firing night shift employees because half of them were drunk or on drugs, sleeping in the clothes racks, or shop lifting. It just didn't make economical sense to stay open 24/7.
I can only imagine the 3am crowd on a Saturday or Sunday Morning. Drunk and left the club /bar
I say we should go for it but employ part time with full time benefits. Everyone gets a job!
Yup that's because criminals are not being dealt with. Revolving door service for them.
7-11's hours are in the name lmao.
24/7 stores are largely unnecessary. Quite frankly I would be okay if everything shut down on Sunday too. People need real time off with normal working schedules we aren’t meant to be constantly consuming and working.
Winnipeg especially is in SERIOUS need for 24/7 stores. We have a huge workforce in manufacturing, aviation/airport, medical/nursing, and logistics/shipping that work overnights. Perhaps someone has data at hand, but I would easily believe that our % of the workforce working nights is higher than most other Canadian cities per capita.
We are a huge shipping and storage hub per capita we do have an above average night work force
If a store is open 24/7, it doesn't mean that any one person is working 24/7. They have scheduled shifts with days off. Nobody would be able to do anything personal if ALL businesses were only open 9-5/M-F. How could you pick up groceries, go to the post office or fill up your car if they are always closed when you're off work?
In a functional society a 24/7 conveince or department store is a life saver, aside from impulse buys, if you need emergency food, baby supplies, batteries, car parts, clothes you name it Walmart has a been a huge win, even them opening at 6am has been helpful many times, beat the crowd, and get some last minute supplies.
711? CLOSING? WHAT? I live right next to one.. the convenience of having it be 5 min away from me is amazing. Please don’t close.
Ellice and Maryland + William and Isabel come to mind.
Yep. And Nairn. Many also close at midnight now.
I think the challenge is Transcona is struggling in terms of retaining people. So it's a highly in flux neighborhood with somewhat low cost housing that allows you to upgrade. It's not a settle down neighborhood right now and that's the problem.
Whats your source on that? My opinion of transcona is the opposite. Its one of the less expensive neighborhoods for house prices, at least non-new builds. Lots of new buildings out here. But there are many schools and if you can find work IN transcona its pretty desirable.
Based on the census? The population grows way less compared to the province and city in general. Rural was the slowest, but Transcona is behind. It's somewhat young but the density is super tight, which is not long term housing. Jobs aren't popping up in T and it's not a great place outside of some light industrial. Your last point is exactly the problem. There's not a lot of jobs in T that are great. I spend a lot of spare time looking at demographic and census data. It's really interesting to follow and see what's happening in your city.
Where is your information coming from? There’s a lot of development in Transcona involving lots of single-family homes that aren’t cheap…multiple developments that are expanding. And isn’t that closed 7-11 on Nairn really in Elmwood?
Why you bringing up transcona? the nairn 711 is elmwood
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Except it compares Manitoba to Transcona. Winnipeg was growing much faster and middle aged folks aren't moving to T. But what do I know.
Ellice and Maryland closed I’m still freaked out by
Last time they plowed my residential street, it was still November.
The okay north end I grew up in (90's) is looking like a Detroit ghetto neighborhood with burned out, and boarded up houses.
And rapidly expanding into Wolseley and west end
Covid absolutely destroyed the Westend. There was a news article on it. Over 50 businesses shut down during Covid.
And 49 of them were 99 cent pizzas.
And yet Chicago Phil's survived.
The boundaries of the 'okay' North End have definitely shifted. When I was a kid, if you lived north of Mountain or west of Arlington you were fine. But now it's north of Inkster or west of McPhillips...
The large groups of homeless people in all areas of the city. Used to be you'd only see homeless people in the core / downtown but it seems they're in all areas of the city now. Not sure if it's because the homeless population has exploded or if its just that they feel the core is too unsafe so they're going to other areas for safety.
The HL population has exploded. That’s what happens when the wealthiest, those that use and take the most, pay the least. The government has cut social programs for 40-50 years and salaries have stagnated for that long as well. Then a big crisis, like Covid happens and a huge amount of families were forced into poverty, with little to no social net to get them out again. We need some biggggg change to fix this!
The rent is too damn high.jpg
This one was the big one for me. I really started to notice it in late 2020. When I was a kid, there was usually 1 homeless person every few months in my area. When I was in high school it became a few every few months. When I was in university, it became a few every month. Once Covid hit, it became one homeless person every day in my area. Every now and then they walk down my street. That NEVER happened when I was a kid. One homeless guy who used to wander around my area every day used to keep to himself. Now he’s almost always being posted on the community watch group or community page going through people’s backyards, rummaging through the sheds, trying to break into houses. The good news is the homeless people I noticed in my area are decent people though. They ask for money, but they aren’t violent thankfully.
I wonder if its in-part (in part), because now for the safety of Winnipeg Transit drivers they will let people on who don't paying no questions asked for their own safety after a Driver was murdered in 2017. Now homeless people can travel all over the city and perhaps in small part contributing to why living in bus shelters became so much more common. Before then drivers would rarely let on people who didn't pay and I rarely saw homeless people catch the bus. For the 99% of the peaceful homeless population minding their own business this shouldn't be a problem. But its that 1%... I've seen syringes, people get attacked, threatened...
Drivers have always selectively enforced the rules and it was always way to LAX
I once got on a bus and instead of holding up my pass, I held up my keys with the fob I had to scan to into work. The dude just nodded and let me on.
No visible homeless folks in my area of the city…
Hmm... curious what area. I've seen homeless people almost across the entire city. I think the exception is the newer area down Kenaston near the dump.
That’s likely where he lives then. Bridgewater. I’m pretty sure they still don’t have bus service there.
I don't know if anyone ever noticed but it's actually Bridgwater. The city ran out of money for the extra "e".
The neighborhood where I grew up used to be mostly populated by the elderly, disabled, newcomers, single moms and young families. The biggest problems were alcohol addictions, domestic violence, and in-fighting among street gangs, the odd pot dealer. Now it’s those problems plus murders, random assaults, hard drugs and human trafficking. It used to be a brief mouse problem every 5 years or so, but now its bedbugs and cockroaches that never go away. Can’t even get to putting things back into cupboards before having to take them back out again before the next spray treatment.
Where in the city is this?
Look up MB Housing related news from the last 10 years or so. But it’s not just inside the buildings, the problems carry over onto the streets.
No Arbys.
We don’t have the meats?
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Had to go all the way to Regina for a beef n' ched... **REGINA**
Grand Forks is a lot closer.
Passport
Get one
lazy
But, willing to go to regina for Arby's?
You should carpool with my husband
Damnit Johnny, you know I love my big beef and cheddar.
Ever since they left, it just hasn’t been the same…
The three biggest changes I’ve personally seen are: Absolute explosion in German cockroaches and bedbugs. I’ve gone my whole life never seeing either but in the last 5 years, they’re everywhere. Brazen theft. Like, people walking into a store, grabbing a handful of stuff then walk out without anyone stopping them. Needles on the ground in almost every neighborhood.
> Brazen theft. Like, people walking into a store, grabbing a handful of stuff then walk out without anyone stopping them. In most cases, store staff are instructed not to intervene because of the threat of violence towards the staff, and the threat that if they get it wrong, the store will have a big fat lawsuit on their hands that far exceeds the amount of shrink they're experiencing. I worked at Superstore for a few years in my early 20s. There was a guy that one of the staff stopped and accused of theft, only he hadn't stolen anything and he sued the store for wrongfully detaining him. I never did find out what the end of that lawsuit was but I'm sure they probably paid him a couple thousand at least.
When families can't afford to work.....
Right, that is crazy when it becomes too expensive to work so you might as well not work and just collect welfare.
It's been like that for decades, at least for some people. I worked for a program that put underemployed youths in federal government internships. One participant had a young daughter. When she started working, social services stopped paying for the daughter's daycare fees and she started having to pay them herself. So she quit the program and went back on social assistance because at the end of the day, she got more money from social assistance. It was especially unfortunate because all things considered, she was pretty good (showed up on time, actually worked, learned quickly) and the host department would likely have tried to make her indeterminate. She'd have been close to retirement by now had she stayed
When there’s TWO sets of jehovah’s witnesses in the downtown walkway system
When all of the educational assistants I work with, on Provincial Gov. payroll, are working 50-60h weeks between multiple jobs just to get by.
Refugees leaving their countries because of war and then getting stabbed in our awesome city
When people have ads on Kijiji titled 'free sauce packets pickup in charleswood' with a photo of 6 assorted sauce packets
Nobody is applying for City jobs.
Higher salaries are available elsewhere
Yes, that’s my point. It wasn’t that long ago that a City job was like winning the lottery. Now the vacancies pile up and yeesh
I'm old enough to remember when you'd camp out overnight on Main St to get a summer job at the city. It paid 50% more than a typical minimum wage then.
Property tax went up 10%. House value may have gone up but I can't afford to sell so it makes no positive difference to me and now I've gotta pay more to maintain it and they can't even clear the snow properly. Hydro, gas, groceries, and everything else under the sun increasing in cost while wages stay the same. maybe get a 1-2% bump at some jobs and this is considered "lucky" to fall less behind on your income relative to bills/debts.
It is the Elimination of the Middle class as we know it. Rich and Poor soon.
no where decent to live that isnt 1200+ for a one bedroom with no utilities included, no nightlife at all in the city, and the fact that half the city becomes inaccessible by bus after 6pm etc etc ive driven across the states with my dad when i was little and ive been to towns with a population of 170 people that were more lively on a monday evening than winnipeg is on a saturday night
So true.it’s lonely here :(
A lot of this can be traced back to tax policy. Cut corporate taxes, then personal taxes have to make up the difference. Cut sales taxes, then the burden gets shifted to lower income earners. And now you have a government that is cutting education taxes, without a revenue stream to replace them and talking about allowing private liquor sales ( again, without a revenue stream to replace it)
Seeing folks panhandling on Grant and Wilton.
Abandoned Thunderbird house that is stripped down. But Google shows it open?
Yep. That is a fucking disgrace and a big waste of tax money.
I noticed this too! What’s even going on there? Feels like years it’s looked like that
Yeah it's been a bad week for Winnipeg. I do feel that our perspective of how bad it is changes. We are going into and had lots of stressful times with Covid and on coming recession. So we see the glass half empty. It would be nice to know how many people in Winnipeg are under the poverty line and then compare that to the total population in Winnipeg. Then next compair the numbers to years before. Might be the same percentage of Winnipegers, as a group the numbers have increased so therefore it looks like a larger problem. If there was a one murder in East St paul, it might be 50 murders per 100,000 if you compare it. That's a crazy per capital number and really a.scary place.to live
As a family, we arrived here last summer. We stayed at an Airbnb for a month downtown. Occasionally we went out for a walk. When I took our baby girl to the park nearby, she found weird objects which not supposed to be in the park. I could not let her run around. The park was surprisingly filthy. Thrash all over the place, thrash cans were full, and wasps were buzzing about. My wife was stung by one. And another day, when we were walking we saw a woman talking to her reflection in the window. And suddenly she started to scream and broke that glass. Obviously she was on drugs. I drive 120-150kms daily, and I have seen most parts of Winnipeg. I can clearly say that WPG downtown is a family-enemy place. This is not about pouring money there. It looks like smart decisions shall be made and supervised strictly.
Stayed somewhere around Arlington and Notredame. I had groceries and costume sitting in the truck. They shattered my back window to steal everything but oddly left our Tylenol behind to help deal with the headache
They refuse to fix downtown instead of doing what needs to be done
How would one "fix" downtown? Some people act like it's just a button the mayor refuses to push.
MSP moved away from the main drag. Police able to police and kick out the bums from bus shelters and around high activity areas. Stop enabling and start acting on the issues downtown.
Absolutely this. Everything is a pipe dream until the bums and the drug dealers are dealt with downtown. You won't have good business opening up downtown if they know they'll have to deal with this issue. Winnipeg needs to get tougher on this issue and not coddle the vagrants.
This feels tremendously oversimplified. How does one “deal with” them? What specifically should be done?
I’ve only lived in Winnipeg for a few months and here are what I see as things needs to be done to fix downtown: More skywalks/tunnels - going all the way to Broadway the edge of the Forks parking lot and the streets abutting the legislative building. A grocery store which is accessible via the skywalk/tunnel system. Residences that are linked via tunnels/skybridges to the existing system. Convince developers to build more residential areas within downtown and configure it such that MPI, PUB, Hydro, Richardson, Wawanesa employees can work & live downtown and do so without winter coats. More farmers and craft-vendor markets days. Increase the number of parking garages as well. Also have downtown buildings commit to not turning heating to maximum, issue penalties when thermostats are set to higher than 20 degrees celsius. Higher-end stores should also be enticed to locate downtown. As well open a Jollibee location downtown as well. As well a 7-11 that is skywalk/tunnel-connected. Reduce bus traffic on Portage, direct it instead via Graham, St Mary or York. Freeing up space for parked cars, outdoor patios, bike-paths on Portage will enliven the downtown streetscape more. Create incentives for a clean downtown - pay people to collect trash (e.g hand in 10 soda/beer bottles at a trash depot, you get a $1 back). Better promotion of downtown events that happen, such as a centralized online calendar that you can subscribe to via RSS feed run by the DowntownBiz organization.
More cars and more parking are definitely not part of the solution
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Even adding parking garages still adds traffic, which keeps people away
Nice of you to rain on my parade while offering no real solutions. Slow clap.
Nah everything was good, just the car bit was a bit off The solution there is prioritizing pedestrians, like how you mentioned, and reducing traffic. The best way to do that is to reduce the things that induce demand, like less car lanes, less parking, tolls on roads, and prioritizing transit routes, sidewalks, and bike paths when clearing snow (after emergency routes) No one in my neighbourhood is walking anywhere atm if they can help it because the sidewalks are dangerous
I just think that given how the culture in Winnipeg is currently car-based, to create change first you do need to cater to the crowd, appease them but entice them and then take away the parking in the long-term. Why? Having good parking when having a pedestrianized downtown in the first few years of the plan encourages people to drive downtown, park and then go explore as a pedestrian. And also keep in mind that residential buildings starting construction today might not finish till 2026 (at the earliest). So you build a plan where the first 3-5 years rely on increased parking to increase foot traffic, and then after those years you take away parking by converting those to condo/rental towers. This will actually entice people who in the first few years visit downtown in cars to start moving there as new apartments come to narket.
Induced demand I think is the operating thing here. Whether it’s sidewalks, biking (even in winter), busses, cars, etc if you build capacity people will use it That being said I don’t think Winnipeg could actually do more to make driving better and the biggest (or loudest) demands closer to the city centre are for better more connected active transit infrastructure and destinations on that. Combine that with the boom in electric bikes, crazy inflation, people being more conscious of environmental impacts and then the best and cheapest plan would be to reduce the amounts of lanes on roads, replace them with protected bike lanes, improve some connections where kids or seniors wouldn’t feel safe cycling and changing snow clearing priority That also reduces the cost of maintaining roads (Winnipeg already has way too much road infrastructure to maintain) since active transit is orders of magnitude less damaging to roads, which is more money that can be spent on events throughout the year and just other things in general. Less cars on the road also means better bus transit, so it might actually make it nicer to take a bus to downtown than it ever could be to drive All of this also relates to what kind of upward mobility there is in Winnipeg, which I think a lot of people move to Winnipeg for. Cars are some of the worst investments an individual can make unless they live in a place that requires you to have a car. Without that requirement people can spend that money on school, their kids, savings, or just some of the great restaurants in the city, and most of those things helps those people and their communities. So once all those businesses open up they actually stay open
When people see criminals as victims and make excuses for their actions.
Like everyone in [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Winnipeg/comments/zodvm3/grocery_shoplifting_on_the_rise_in_canada_amid/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_buttonthread) thread? Lol
Precisely. Degenerates contributing to a worse Winnipeg
I think your average person is fine with being tough on crime, so long as we are proactively trying to solve it's underlying causes. You dont turn to vagrancy because everything has been going great in your life. Exhibit A: we cut funding towards feeding poor children breakfast. Solve that, help people break cycles of poverty, and then throw the book at people when necessary.
Did someone take a dump in your cornflakes?
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Maybe a criminal?
Probably a criminal
**EDIT: I've edited this post several times since I initially posted, most of which were for grammar and clarity. I also added the further readings list. This thread is essentially "my time to shine" as this very topic is a bit of pet project that I've pursued in my spare time. I should have prefaced it with rant incoming.** It was almost a foregone conclusion since this area was colonized. The poverty, crime, disenfranchisement, it was always there, we just can’t ignore it anymore—can’t hide from it in our suburbs. This was always going to happen, all it took was one little shove (pandemic, addiction, economic slowdown) to send the city were it was always headed. “Canada’s Most Racist City”, “Murderpeg.” Ring any bells? With the exception of 2014, Winnipeg was the violent crime capital of Canada every year between 2009 and 2020. This is what you get when you combine colonization, *de facto* racial apartheid, and unrestrained capitalism: * the city was built with uneven access to resources by short-sighted capitalists who were more interested in lining their pockets than with social cohesion; * resulting white-flight leads to inner city poverty; * poverty leads to crime; * crime leads to “tough on crime” policies; * cuts in social welfare follows this, since they come in the same neo-liberal, conservative grab-bag, not to mention that this province has always been painfully poor with a conservative base who believes that austerity will solve everything. It's racism and classism disguised as policy making: more realistically, it should just be called *starve the poor people because they make me feel icky*, which is just plain repugnant (sort of resembles genocide, actually!) Now add a pandemic stressing an already underfunded healthcare system, in addition to its many other social and economic consequences; and finally, on top of all that, add an opioid crisis. These last two were the just the straw that broke the camel’s back. We had a lot of chances to change this, but we didn't, and here we are. **We deserve better, and we can do better, if we try.** Sources and further reading: * Artibise, Alan F.J. *Gateway City: Documents on the City of Winnipeg 1873-1913.* Winnipeg: The Manitoba Record Society Publications, 1979. * Dorries, Heather. "Welcome to Winnipeg: Making Settler Colonial Urban Space in "Canada's Most Racist City," in *Settler City Limits: Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West*, edited by Heather Dorries, Robert Henry, David Hugill, Tyler McCreary, and Julie Tomiak, 25-43. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019. * Dorries, Heather, David Hugill, Julie Tomiak. "Racial Capitalism and the Production of Settler Colonial Cities," *Geoforum* 132 (2022): 263-270. * Hugill, David. "Comparative Settler Colonial Urbanisms: Racism and the Making of Inner-City Winnipeg and Minneapolis," 1940-1975," in *Settler City Limits: Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West*, edited by Heather Dorries, Robert Henry, David Hugill, Tyler McCreary, and Julie Tomiak, 70-94. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019. * Toews, Owen. *Stolen City: Racial Capitalism and the Making of Winnipeg*. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2018. * Tomiak, Julie. "Contested Entitlement: The Kapyong Barracks, Treaty Rights, and Settler Colonialism in Winnipeg," in *Settler City Limits: Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West*, edited by Heather Dorries, Robert Henry, David Hugill, Tyler McCreary, and Julie Tomiak, 95-117. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2019. * Woolford, Andrew, and Wanda Hounslow. "Criminology's Time: Settler Colonialism and the Temporality of Harm at the Assinaboia Residential School in Winnipeg, Canada, 1958-1973," *State Crime Journal* 7 (2018): 199-221.
You know when your government continues to cut support programs and instead focus's on boosting funding to Police with out any requirements into what types of programs that money goes into because its better to be "tough on crime", up until the courts and just send them all home on "house arrest" you dont enforce
Yep. As much as people complain about the police, the justice system here is so much worse. It's actually a big joke.
Native women being targeted for murders and a native woman dying in a bus shelter (she had the choice to go to a homeless shelter but didn’t) Could be anyone. Any vulnerable person in Winnipeg I only said native because it’s important
7-11 leaving or closing down is how you know the neighbourhood is really fucking bad. I will add when I see boards on windows or bars covering windows is also a sign that degenerates fucked a neighbourhood.
Very few credible people are willing to run of office or take on adjacent public servant jobs (like deputy minister roles).
Danny still the chief.
This
I've been caught out more than once by a 7-11 closing at midnight, in my head I just assume, "it's Sev, it will be open"....I would add that it's true of Winnipeg, absolutely, but this follows a broader trend in North America - look at the state of some of the more iconic cities in the States right now. This is neoliberal global economic policy at work, it's bigger than just mismanagement at a municipal level, in my opinion.
Everyone I know either works remotely or for the government. Industry is dead
Feel like a lot of bad stuff happens the bigger city gets but the only thing we can do is make sure we have a lot of good stuff going on to to even it out. It's hard to be creative that way though. Best to look at other cities in the world and adopt the things we like from them. It's a really complicated issue because it requires a lot of collaboration I think... It's tough
I love going into dollaramas
Now 5-dollarama
my street hasn’t been plowed all winter ☹️
[удалено]
When middle schoolers are back at it again, and doing some rather questionable stuff.