Firsthand
A visitor to the Moss Park Apartments noticed that very few of the buildings were secured and witnessed a person breaking the door of one of the buildings and entering it. The people living there were clearly not well off materially.

The neighbourhood’s buildings are typically split between rental and government housing, which helps to create a noticeable schism of opinions about the area. Some residents praise Moss Park for its diversity and safety, calling it “a nice place to live” while citing as positives its proximity to the Eaton Centre and local shopping. Others are vocal about how dangerous it is due to the considerable amount of drug trafficking that takes place there.

A lady from Punjab, India tells how she has lived there for eight years running a restaurant and, although she feels that the rent is fairly high, enjoys being close to No Frills, Food Basics, Metro, Rabba, and the Eaton Centre, as well as being fairly close to a lot of the downtown colleges (including George Brown). She noted that her building is home to a lot of students and feels that it is well-maintained and that it has become much safer in the past couple of years.

Toronto Life claims that “Moss Park has potential, but hampered by crime, it remains on the city’s list of 13 at-risk neighbourhoods.”¹

The Landscape
This neighbourhood in downtown Toronto is known for its continuing history of drug crime and visible homelessness. Technically, Moss Park is approximately L-shaped and is bordered on the north by Carlton Street, on the east by Parliament Street to Queen Street East and over to the Don River, on the south by Eastern Avenue and Front Street, and on the west by Jarvis Street. Generally, though, Torontonians think of Moss Park as consisting solely of the Moss Park public housing project − three massive apartment buildings between Parliament and Sherbourne Street, south of Dundas Street East and north of Queen − as well as the areas immediately adjacent.

The Moss Park patch, then, consists primarily of the following six buildings:

• 155, 191 and 201 Sherbourne St.
• 275, 285, and 295 Shuter St.

This much more specific Moss Park is home to many low-income families, numerous homeless shelters, the public park, an arena, and the Moss Park Armoury − a military training base used by many reserve and cadet units of the Canadian Forces.

The People
In the wider Moss Park neighbourhood that includes this specific patch:²

• The population in 2006 numbered 5,528
• The population density is 17,351 people per square kilometre compared with Toronto’s 866 people/km² average
• Very little in the way of further useful information is available as Statistics Canada has suppressed it for the area, which signifies that few people in the patch responded to the 2006 Census³ − this is typical of low-income, high-crime areas

The History
Moss Park used to be one of the central areas for Toronto’s industry. It was home to large factories and the tightly-packed homes that housed their employees. During the 1960s, many of those homes were bulldozed in order to make room for the Moss Park public housing project which consists of three large towers (275, 285, and 295 Shuter) run by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. During the 1970s, Moss Park quickly became one of the poorest areas of Toronto as nearly all of the factories vacated the area. More recently, many of the old industrial structures have been retrofitted into cultured domiciles and upscale shopping areas. Accordingly, the area has seen a considerable amount of real estate interest, as the nearby residential areas of Corktown and Cabbagetown have recently seen a lot in the way of refurbishment and are now in great demand.⁴

The Challenge
Are you ready to take Jesus into Moss Park − an area absolutely packed with people who need to hear it?  Would you be willing to move in?

Sources
¹Toronto Life magazine
²All statistics in the section taken from Census tract profile for 0033.00 (CT), Toronto (CMA) and Ontario
³The exclusion of this Moss Park patch can be seen clearly in the City’s 2006 neighborhood profile
⁴Moss Park on Wikipedia