Juno News - October 23, 2024


Toronto is DETERIORATING under Chow

Topics
homeless encampment strategy
Mentioned
Councillor Osma Malik Olivia Chow Parks
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Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

151.76

Word count

860

Sentence count

59

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A group of squatters have been living in a park for the past two years near the Soho Hotel in New York City s SoHo neighborhood. They ve been attacked, defecated on, and squatted over, but the city refuses to do anything about it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Well, welcome folks to Osma Malik's Mess, Councillor Osma Malik I'm talking about.
00:00:05.840 This is Clarence Square Park where an encampment full of violent people, drug addicts and assorted squatters
00:00:13.960 have taken over the park for the last two years. I'm talking two years.
00:00:21.240 This park is near the Soho Hotel and a number of other boutique hotels that of course house tourists
00:00:29.100 and tourists have noticed what's going on here. Not to mention the people who have to live right
00:00:34.820 across the street and around the park. They spoke today about the violence, about being assaulted,
00:00:43.500 about the feces, about the fact that the park you can see has absolutely no grass. The garbage
00:00:50.340 apparently was just picked up before we came down here to do some filming and people are afraid.
00:00:58.680 They're not only afraid, they're fed up.
00:01:01.400 I've been assaulted two times where a woman that was on drugs and she was actually going 1.00
00:01:06.440 after many people but managed to put her arms onto me. And then I phoned the police. They
00:01:12.400 came and when they came they told me she's already assaulted over a hundred people. I actually feel
00:01:19.520 sorry for the police. And we're trying to get rid of the people and that's why they're standing
00:01:24.400 there because what can they do? Really there is a system problem that they can't even move them.
00:01:29.680 They will rebuttal no problem because they're like nothing's going to happen to us. So they have
00:01:35.040 so much confidence to hurt you because there is no law in place to do something about it.
00:01:41.120 Are the criminals running the city you think?
00:01:43.120 Yes, absolutely.
00:01:44.400 We have to take back these parks. You've got tens of thousands of people who would like
00:01:49.440 to enjoy them. And I ask everybody seriously to consider this. I do have some compassion.
00:01:54.640 Things have to be done. But you know, would you allow your kids and elderly parents to walk in 1.00
00:02:00.560 this park and spend the nice Saturday afternoon? I think not.
00:02:03.520 So I've been personally impacted by this as a resident who lives right across the street.
00:02:09.440 Our building has been charted many, many times.
00:02:13.440 Great violence vendors who we have found roam in our hallways.
00:02:17.440 And I personally have had an incident where I had a woman here who was extremely angry
00:02:25.520 who came out of the camp and lunged at me and tried to steal my dog.
00:02:31.680 Women in particular are terrified to walk in this area in the afternoon. 1.00
00:02:38.960 People would go out to enjoy a night out on a patio or a restaurant. That's all
00:02:46.560 changed in our community here. It's not safe. It's just not safe.
00:02:52.880 If you look at the fountain over here, this fountain is all boarded up. That was because they were using
00:02:57.440 it as a public bathroom and for other weird shenanigans that have went on there.
00:03:04.480 All of it chronicled many residents who were living these condos nearby.
00:03:08.960 Parks are supposed to be for everyone. And park bylaws, the city's own bylaws are being broken.
00:03:15.440 So if Mayor Olivia Chow, if Deputy Mayor and City Councillor Oswald Malik wants to make squatting
00:03:24.000 and illegally occupying a park legal, change the bylaws. Make that your city policy.
00:03:31.840 But in the absence of you doing that, you have a responsibility and a duty to act.
00:03:38.160 You have a responsibility to ensure that all the people that call this neighbourhood home are safe.
00:03:44.560 The homeless encampment strategy that was passed in May, has that made things worse?
00:03:49.360 So I think it's important to point out that the absence of action as we've seen here up and until,
00:03:56.320 you know, surprise, surprise, the morning before a photo op is a choice, right? To choose to do nothing
00:04:04.080 and allow this to continue is an active choice that has been made by Oswald Malik. That's why
00:04:11.360 this sign, I think, is so apt and why so many constituents, people who call this neighbourhood home,
00:04:19.920 find her to be missing in action. This place is a fire hazard. There have been fires, explosions. I mean,
00:04:26.800 what more does one have to do to convince her to clean up this encampment? But under Mayor Olivia Chow's 1.00
00:04:34.720 homeless encampment strategy, which was passed six months ago, she has told them that the squatters,
00:04:42.080 the drug addicts, have every right to be here. And they send down a bunch of homeless workers to hug 0.95
00:04:47.920 and stroke them and security people to sort of hang around in a nice shed that has been built for them,
00:04:54.080 which the residents say is costing a million dollars a year, a hundred thousand dollars a month. Is that
00:05:01.600 not insane? I mean, get rid of these people, put them in shelter, find them appropriate drug rehabilitation 0.99
00:05:09.280 services. This city is just gone into a cycle that is not pretty. And I feel sorry for the residents,
00:05:18.480 I feel sorry for tourists who come here. And let's hope this time Olivia Chow and Osma Malik hear the
00:05:25.760 pleas of these people. Maybe some pressure in the media will do it. For True North, I'm Sue Ann Levy.