Firsthand
In a YouTube video a young man talks about the disparity between St. James Town, one of Canada’s poorest neighbourhoods, and nearby Rosedale, one of Canada’s richest communities. He laments the fact that many new immigrants living in St. James Town will never achieve the wealth that the Rosedale residents enjoy. A major barrier for immigrants is the reluctance of Canadian employers to consider foreign credentials and experience. He feels that government legislation won’t help because it won’t change the hearts of Canadians. Without adequate income, residents can’t purchase healthy food or afford dental and other healthcare not covered by OHIP.¹

Another resident of the ‘hood says neighbours are like pieces of a puzzle. He says people living in St. James Town can relate to each other because they come from similar situations as immigrants—this creates a bond that can be used as a building block for improvement.²

The Landscape
The St. James Town patch, located in downtown Toronto, is bounded by Howard Street in the north, Parliament Street in the east, Wellesley Street East in the south and Sherbourne Street in the west. The neighbourhood is adjacent to the St. James Cemetery and is close to the Wellesley Hospital.

The patch is home to 18 apartment buildings, 14 of which are market-rent while four are run by Toronto Community Housing. More than 15,000 people live in the patch.

In the late 1990s the City implemented “St. James Town 2000: A Community Action Plan,” which aimed to revitalize the neighbourhood through building a multi-service community centre (including a library branch), improving parks and repairing buildings.³

The People
In the wider St. James Town neighbourhood that this patch belongs to:⁴

• Population density is a whopping 64,636 people per square kilometre (!) compared with the 866/km² Toronto average − this is the densest neighbourhood in Canada
• 98% of residents live in apartment buildings with five or more storeys
• 66% of residents have a first language other than English or French, athough 89% of residents speak English
• 64% of residents are immigrants − 74% arrived in Canada between 1991 and 2006
• 55% of residents over age 15 have a post-secondary certificate, diploma or degree − 59% received their degree outside Canada
• The 2006 unemployment rate was 10.9% as compared with 6.7% for the rest of Toronto
• 74% of residents are visible minorities − the largest group is South Asian followed by Filipino and black
• In 2006, 51% of residents were considered to have low, before-tax incomes as compared with 18% in the rest of Toronto, making this a high-poverty neighbourhood

Residents of St. James Town are concerned about the lack of safe places for children to play, the condition of the buildings, drug dealers, and the lack of or inaccessibility of services. Some have taken action to improve their community. Community Matters Toronto is a group of “neighbours helping neighbours in St. James Town.”⁵ Low Income Families Together (LIFT) is a resource education centre run by and for people with low incomes that has been active in the neighbourhood for more than 20 years.⁶ One of the local churches is called 614 St. Jamestown.

View some art from the ‘hood at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMa2n2TTqQY&feature.

The History
St. James Town emerged as a desirable middle-class neighbourhood in the 1870s. It was filled with picturesque Victorian homes until the 1950s when the city rezoned the downtown core and private developers demolished the houses to make way for Toronto’s first high-rise apartment buildings. The buildings were designed as a neighbourhood for singles and professionals but failed to attract them and soon became populated with low- and moderate-income families.⁷

The Challenge
Might you be one of the puzzle pieces that God created to complete His picture of the St. James Town patch? Would you be willing to move in?

Sources
¹www.youtube.com
²www.youtube.com
³www.torontoneighbourhoods.net
⁴The St. James Town patch is nearly identical to the census tract that these statistic cover. All statistics in this section were taken from census tract profile for 0065.00 (CT), Toronto (CMA) and Ontario.
⁵communitymatterstoronto.org
⁶www.lift.to
⁷With information from Toronto Neighbourhoods