MoveIn status: praying for a team for Dixon Park and a team for Wincott Park

The Neighbourhood: From the outside it looks pretty ordinary.  But when you walk into the coffee shop at the southeast corner of Dixon and Kipling, it’s like entering a whole new world.  Almost every seat is taken, shyness has no place, very little English is spoken, and–chatting, sharing, sometimes happily yelling; from private discussions to debates spanning three tables–the room is filled with social expression.  Everyone feels at home.  It’s men for the most part.  Young and old.  And almost everyone is from Somalia.

Welcome to Dixon Park.  This neighbourhood on the west end boasts one huge apartment building after another every hundred feet or so for a kilometer - and it’s the same thing on the other side of the street (a six-lane highway) - in Wincott Park, Dixon Park’s southern twin.  Four of these buildings, identical in design, are 300 feet long and perhaps 20 stories high.  They look like huge inhabited walls.  “This is what the walls of Jericho must have looked like.”

Compared to some of the other high-needs neighbourhoods in Toronto, Dixon Park seems relatively well planned.  Lots of green space (when the ground is not covered with snow and frozen slush), a basketball court, fences everywhere (a downside to be sure), a few small parking lots, a school on the northern border (with plenty of portables), some higher-end condos (that don’t quite fit in) on the northeastern periphery; and, across the street in Wincott Park: a walking path bordering a shallow ravine and a small (man-made?) pond to the southeast, a children’s playground that seems far too close to the highway, a few more imposing apartment buildings, sub-divisions of houses keeping their distance further south, and we’re back to the hodge-podge plaza that houses a Food Basics, a few other not-doing-so-well establishments, and the happy, life- and laugher-filled Somalian coffee shop.

Some interesting statistics/facts about Dixon Park:

-Just 200 meters by 1km. (Wincott Park is about the same size.)
-About 10,000 people (officially 6,700; lower due to under-reporting). About 81% visible minorities. (About the same number in Wincott Park - so about 20,000 (!) people in an area 0.5 x 1 km area.)
-Lots of kids! 9% 0-4 years old; 9% 5-9 years old
-Also lots of seniors; the young and old are living together
-33% African (e.g., Somalian), Caribbean, or African-Canadian
-57% (!) South Asian
-Average (median) income just under $20,000 (not a lot for Canada!)

Additional statistics on the bigger “Kingsview Village - The Westway” area, of which Dixon Park and Wincott Park are just part:

-Only 51% of the population of ‘working age’ because there are so many kids and seniors
-Top five home languages: Urdu (1,350 people), Somali (1,145), Italian (725), Spanish (555), Korean (425). (Many of the Somalis live in Dixon Park.)
-56% immigrants

Thousands of people are waiting for Christ in this neighbourhood; and Christ is also waiting in Dixon Park - for Christians to join him in reaching this neighbourhood for his glory.

Would you be willing to move in?

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Raw data: greater area profile: StatsCan