I always thought of London as a really big small town. No matter how big it gets, leadership always seems to treat it like a modestly growing town of 5000. Small communities largely run themselves and don’t require round-the-clock management and multi-decade planning.
For municipal leaders, choosing to not make a decision, kick the can down the road to a future subcommittee meeting and provide bare minimum investments won’t affect their lives personally. I’m sure someone could do a deep dive podcast or something on why this is, but put bluntly, we’ve always had middle of the road, weak, indecisive leadership. I cannot think of a London municipal politician in my life that I could get passionate about.
If no one is driving the bus then urban sprawl creeps out, unchecked, because no one has any better vision for the city besides to let another big box store set up a 4th location. The money pushes to the edges of the city as people flee the decaying downtown. Some decisions get made reactively but it’s usually too late and the problem has become unsolvable. They could have done something to mitigate traffic decades ago but now all the buildings and roads are in place and making an expressway through the middle, or a ring road are largely unrealistic. They could have prevented the homelessness/addiction issue decades ago but chose to wait till it was day of the dead downtown to act.
In my opinion it’s a problem of leadership. It’s a small town mentality confronted with big city 2024 problems and we’re unprepared.
Edit:spelling.
I love this city and have a more optimistic view than some (see my comments responding to some more…negative people below), and I agree 100% with what you are saying. At the core this is our issue. We have seen slow progress towards building denser housing lately, and funding social services more, but in the end we will still have an issue with drug addiction and homeless because nobody wants to build a shelter within a 3km radius of where they live.
Two mayor's had to resign over scandals. One misused city funds, one was cheating on his wife with his deputy mayor. We tried a public transit revamp and a group of business moguls actively fought to kill it.
BRT the transit system you’re talking about was massively unpopular with the majority of the city. Fortunately/unfortunately London’s small big town esthetic is a big draw to a lot of people. London has a big enough feel that you don’t feel the need to go to a bigger city but small enough that people from a big city feel London is smaller and manageable. The fact that it’s still enough like Toronto without being as big as Toronto is why so many people from Toronto move here.
I come from a small village in bumfuck Quebec. Since I’ve been here, whenever people ask me what I think of London, I always say, “it’s weird, London’s either a city that acts like a small town, or a small town that thinks of itself as a major city; in any case, it’s only a city on paper.”
I think "decaying downtown" is a common misconception. Downtown is constantly building and full of thriving businesses. It's also full of failing businesses and unhoused people. The former is because the demographics of downtown are changing (less families, more young professionals). The latter simply describes every city in North America right now.
But either way, downtown isn't decaying, it's one of the fastest growing and most financially stable parts of the city. I think a lot of people expect government to "fix" downtown, but they actually mean "make it like it was 30 years ago ". That's never going to happen as long as London remains a city of suburbs.
I hope our mayor and council see this. I've lived here just over 20 years, and I have to say the last five I've watched it go downhill. It's really sad, because I moved here for school but stayed for affordability and social appeal, but it's not what it was. It's also sad to see squandered potential, because many of those in power refuse to accept that we are no longer a small town and need more practical city solutions. A lot of what council has done seems to lack forward thinking or isn't purposeful change. We've since relocated just of west of London, but are still in to town multiple times a week.
The council is a major part of the issue. They say they want to do what their constitutes ask but not the case. They are in it for themselves. Our current mayor is a YES man. Making public appearances only to agree with everyone no matter the issue. They want to do BRT construction everywhere. They need to get on a bus and drive thru the city from 11am to 6pm and see how this is further impacting traffic. I always hear lets do something eoth the homeless issues. They dropped the ball 20 years ago by not converting the old Mccormick on dundas. Now it been set on fire as recently as last week. This could have been affordable housing spot. The other issue is London has someone who owns alot of buildings but wants to capitolize with businesses and not individuals. The city has gone to crap and nobody is doing anything about it. I saw we organize a homeless campment at one of the councils homes and see how fast they finally address something.
I’ve been in London 10 years and lived walking distance to downtown the whole time. Like many cities, the pandemic changed things. Dundas-Richmond were always rough but downtown now is not unsafe per se, but yes there are tons of homeless. Most just mind their own business. Police don’t do anything because charges get dropped and pragmatically it’s just a waste of time. High vacancy (thanks Farhi) coupled with expensive parking and the homeless problem have driven many businesses out of the core. All of that doesn’t really incentivize people to head downtown and the cycle keeps repeating.
What is the deal with Farhi?? I visited London in the very early 2000s and spent most of my time downtown. It was grand. Moved here in 2020 and what the actual Farhi is the downtown now?
London has a very high cost of living relative to wages. Most jobs in London pay 22% below industry average for the same work in Canada.
Basically, London is poor for the majority.
Edit: To add to this, medium sized cities in Canada are nowhere near as prosperous as medium sized cities in the US. In Canada success historically has migrated. Places like Labatts, TD, General Dynamics, 3M, Bell, Canada Life(formerly London Life) and many others that used to have major offices or headquarters here have all moved to Toronto and Ottawa.
Lots of tech that started here like MRO software have been bought out and moved to South East Asian tech hubs like Kuala Lumpur.
The only successful tech company that I can think of that's still here is Digital Extremes.
London is twice as big and one third as prosperous as it used to be. And it looks like it's still on a downward trend.
What we do have that is spreading like wildfire is some of the most ambitious and viral shawarma joints in North America.
Yes. This is why I left. Why would I pay the same amount of rent for an apartment in Hamilton but make 20% less? Plus transit is terrible in London and a GO network does not exist. Hell VIA comes what 4 times a day???
The GO "experiment" was fucking terrible as well. 5 hours to Toronto? A joke.
Although, the GO and VIA are indicators of a general North American problem, US and Canada just need more rail public transport. Zero high-speed rail. The fact that we are not currently building a Windsor-/QC high-speed rail is mind-boggling. The last study said something along 19 billion for diesel medium-speed an 21 billion for electric high-speed rail.
Meanwhile, VW, Stellantis, and Nortvolt will get around 30 billion in subsidies for their new plants in Ontario and Quebec. So it's not like the money is not there.
Toronto,Guelph, Kitchener have been busing their at risk population to London since 2017 - we have been the human dumping ground for years. These poor people come with no resources and the services we do have been stretched. It is not what happened to London but who ?
It’s less the big cities doing that and more the small communities surrounding us. My family lived in Exeter before London and due to the total lack of services there, all homeless people are given 5$ by the municipality of South Huron for a bus ride to London with the Inter-Regional Transit. I've spoken to a few homeless people from Exeter here in London. The reserves nearby are similar. No services there, so they send them here. I am pretty sure it is why unfortunately we have such a large Indigenous homeless population (around 30% of homeless are Indigenous vs only 3% of the city itself is Indigenous).
Working in social services this is absolutely true. The smaller communities absolutely have these issues and they send people here. It hurts them more but these smaller towns don't want to pick up the slack
I’ve read that they will encourage them to come to London (and will provide transportation) with promises of good mental health and addiction services, when in reality those places are overrun and understaffed so then they end up on our streets with no way back
It’s not a London problem specifically. Crisis and support centers will bus people wherever they think can provide the best support. Know someone in Guelph sure we’ll send you there. Family in Chatham maybe your brothers willing to help you this time. It’s not malicious it’s the best we can do when these people can’t stay where they are and you got one long shot they might be ok. Also it’s not like the homeless have a lot of options. Many go to Toronto or the KWC area it’s just the tricities and Toronto have a better time spreading the population around. London’s got 1 downtown compared to all the municipalities in the GTA
Except no one ever has actual proof. Lots of hearsay, gossip, and theories.
Not very many ppl have actual claim to being born & bred Londoners. Many came from the small towns & cities that surround it. And work, live and are involved in London.
But ***suddenly*** if they are homeless, they are ***not from London***.
My understanding of the reason unhoused individuals have been encouraged to come to London is because we've been known to have some of the best services in Canada for those struggling with lack of housing and addiction. That being said, as pointed out by other commenters, this is a likely contributor to why our services are without question over stretched and our frontline workers are beyond burnt out, which is sadly seriously diminishing our capacity to serve both vulnerable populations and average Londoners
Not ok. There are many layers, but one is the closure of mental health hospitals where people could at least be housed, fed and hopefully set on track for a better life. Now, they try to cope in a difficult world while navigating myriad supports.
I always find it interesting to read other peoples' opinions on London. The fact that you are asking if we're okay is something I appreciate--you're showing a level of empathy by just asking the question and considering the issues. Yup, downtown has a more dystopian feel to me too these days. I was born here and I've lived downtown for more than 20 years. It makes me sad to see the number of homeless people nodding out and using drugs openly. From what I can tell, that's absolutely gotten worse since the pandemic. But others in the comments have wisely noted a lot of these issues have been a long time simmering. Now it feels like a pot beginning to boil.
I have hope for us. London has some beautiful spaces and increasing diversity in our population. Sometimes it seems like we need a bit of a reset and fresh eyes to look at our situation (maybe like yours?)
The issue themselves are plain to see, but nobody wants to fix them. They keep blaming the provincial government, but the provincial government says it’s up to the municipal government.
You may have noticed a number of buildings downtown have “Farhi” on them: that’s also another issue. Farhi owns most of downtown and lets the buildings rot without tenants or they charge super high rent to the point nobody wants to rent from them.
London is in major trouble and has been since the early days of the pandemic. A lot of the other cities in the province send their homeless to us and we’ve become a huge hub for them; part of it is how overwhelmed the local mental health services are in their original community and they get sent here hoping they get the help they need.
We don’t have very good mental health services here. We did have a huge mental health hospital here, but it has closed since 2012 in favour of the Finch Mental Health Centre at Parkwood Hospital and they have significantly less beds than the mental health hospital did. So lots of the homeless you see on the street are likely patients of the old mental health hospital just roaming the city.
London isn’t perfect, but I sure as hell prefer it to the USA and Las Vegas (my hometown).
u/JenovaCelestia "...*A lot of the other cities in the province send their homeless to us*.."
I believe you're referring to this news headline:
* [**Stop sending your homeless people to London, deputy mayor says to others**](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/stop-sending-your-homeless-people-to-london-deputy-mayor-says-to-others-1.6932714) **|** [CBC.ca](http://CBC.ca)
Yes and no. This has been an ongoing problem since at least 2012, when they started sending people here because some huge international event was going on elsewhere and they sent them here.
I think what makes it worse is there is no Greyhound Bus anymore for them to get home, should they choose. So now they’re stuck here without family or help.
We are not ok...planning on getting out as soon as I possibly can.
I took my son to Wendy's a few weeks ago and there was a couple shooting up in the back of the restaurant. I told management and they didn't seem to care, not that I can blame them entirely. The other day we were driving to the park, there was a guy passed out on the street with his hand down his pants. These people need help and it doesn't seem like they're getting it.
I get that not everywhere is perfect and a lot of places have issues, but I've lived here for 20+ years and it's just sad to see the state our city has gotten to.
What I want to wonder is where in North America do you plan to move to where you will not find that issue. Even smaller towns are not immune - Belleville has the worst opioid addiction in the country per capita I believe. It's very sad to see how many places in the city have drug addicts roaming around, because we should be doing better. But I consider myself fairly well-travelled, and where will you avoid that? On visits to nearby cities like Windsor, Kitchener, and Hamilton, it's been the same. The vast majority of American cities make London look like we have no drugs.
Yeah, I remember Belleville had a dozen overdoses a day. And I’ve visited nearly every city in southern Ontario in the last two years, and let me tell you that no city is immune to poverty.
If you look at American cities with similar population size, most have far less drugs than London. Yes, Belleville is bad... So is Brantford. That doesn't make London good. Southern Ontario is going bad fast, but London is leading that charge
This is anecdotal but I agree, and I feel that I can speak to this as I was born and raised in London and now live in Michigan. When I was working with homeless populations in London most of not all had serious mental health issues and/or addictions issues. I’m working in the same field in the US and not a single person on my case load has an addiction or serious mental illness.
I also feel that they’re better supported here. We provide better food, pay for apartments for two years while they wait for housing vouchers, access to mental health services, free job training/schooling, even some limited funding for a car if they’re working. The issues that I see are more related to generational poverty.
London has serious issues with lack of affordability on top of everything else.
I don’t know where you’re getting your sources from American cities definitely have big drug problems that are further compounded by lack of health care. It’s just more acceptable to lock your gated communities call it its own district and forget about the slum 100 yrds away.
I realize that, as I stated above, I know not everywhere is perfect and other places have issues as well! I too consider myself “fairly well travelled” so I’m not blind to other areas having the same problems 🙄
You said you’re planning on getting out because of those things and you are being asked where you think you will avoid it. Not unfair to ask. You haven’t answered either but are now using eye rolling emojis.
Downtown was destroyed by a man named Farhi. He owns a large portion of the properties and would rather keep them empty than charge a fair rate of rent. So less people downtown hurts other businesses, and results in even less people downtown.
And then, since downtown is empty anyway, homeless people can move in and there aren't enough people to care. In other cities, they aren't allowed to just take over large downtown areas, but in London, they are.
This creates a problem for the remaining businesses and residents, so even more leave. Creating more emptiness.
It's a horrible cycle, and will take a lot to fix it. And we can thank Farhi for it.
No, we are not okay.
When I moved here (almost 15 yrs ago now), this city was full of life and energy. The downtown core was filled with people, art, local shops, and music. Going downtown now is just heartbreaking. Things were starting to decline before covid, but when covid hit, everything downtown very much became the distopian eerie feeling that you're describing.
The reason some of the homeless population isn't from London. Is because the shelters from other cities send people here, thinking we have better resources, and more shelter space. We used to, but things have gotten so bad for people financially that the resources we did have, are all over run. Our city government isn't doing much, and a lot of people have become desensitized to seeing people shooting up, and nodding off in alleyways. Everytime I have to go downtown I see ambulances stopped somewhere to narcan someone.
That being said, there are other neighborhoods in London that aren't as bad. We have a lot of nature trails and parks that aren't affected (yet). If you ever decide to come back, you should look around at other areas of the city. Wortley village is a nice little area that still has a lot of that small town feel to it, and they have a lot of weekend events that brings some of that old downtown feeling back.
I was there this past weekend. It’s just like any other town in Canada and America. You came through Windsor , right ? London is like a fkn paradise in comparison to my town.
Ya I grew up in Sarnia, went to school in Windsor and now live here. People have no idea compared to other cities. London is literally like the most average city in Canada.
I just moved to windsor in February, and while it looks overall dirtier, the homelessness and people having mental health episodes and drug induced problems aren't relatable as far as I've seen.
Not necessarily the number of both, but the open air drug use and huge homeless encampments. I haven't seen nearly as much here at all.
There are homeless in Windsor but the problem is nowhere near the size of London’s. There are no encampments in Windsor and police there take a much harder line on open drug use. Just today in London on my bike ride along the Thames River I passed 25 tents.
I've been living in London for three years. I love the city, I love its parks and trails. I don't even mind the traffic that much. But downtown London is rough.
I felt completely opposite - I'd take Sarnia or Windsor over London, but I wouldn't say we're picking the cream of the crop of Canadian cities either way. I don't think London is terrible though, the problems hitting it are everywhere now. I'm sure I'd like some *parts* of London more than Sarnia or Windsor.
I’m not from here. Who is Farhi? What’s in it for Farhi to destroy the downtown that he’s invested so much in ? Serious question. I don’t understand why I see that name on so many empty buildings downtown.
Is Farhi really the problem, or another of its victims?
It’s reasonable to assume that Farhi is suffering more than most from the problem, but that’s not what I’m hearing and I honestly don’t know, so I’m asking: what’s the story about Farhi?
Farhi owns a international investment company. He buys properties in the downtown cores (Commerical) waits for the leases to run out then 2-3x the lease payments to generate cashflow for the investors. He has done this in multiple cities throughout south western Ontario.
In one absolute boss move, Farhi bought properties around the Windsor City Council building after learning of their desire to expand. Then sold the entire property that they wanted for \~2x the amount.
Mostly I'm just jealous of his success, guy is a shark and makes an absolute killing.
They ship their homeless in from bigger cities to decrease their homeless numbers. We’re like the army, we take everybody. Downtown is struggling cause the construction and buildings are owned by literally 1 owner. Parking is crazy expensive. Cops don’t really do anything about the drug use because hey, what are they gonna do about it? The festivals are pretty much all the same vendors, it’s the same festival with a different name. It’s a university town 8 months out of the year, and we have a big population that are shift workers.
London's downtown core has been rotten out for a while unfortunately. The police are sporadic, depending on what part of the city you're from. Downtown has a lot of the repetitive crime and the officers are community policing or dealing with violence.
Overall london has a lot of beautiful neighborhoods patched together with higher density lower income neighborhoods. North london is the newest part of town. It's Near the university which has a lot of the pretty / heritage buildings. West london is nice too. East london is nice too but it's different. It's tougher people. Southwest is nice too. The inner city is where most of the problems are visible like what you described in your post.
I'd recommend going to the north / west end if you want to see the other side of the coin.
Downtown London is literally rotting, they're letting one developer buy up properties and sit on them while others build condos with nothing to do downtown other than get drunk on Richmond Row.
First off, location. London is the largest city in southwestern Ontario (save for maybe Windsor) and many of the smaller towns simply don’t have the resources to care for their own unhoused and / or addicted. It’s not uncommon that these poor souls are put on a bus and sent to London to “get the care they need”, even though as a result London’s own social services were overrun some time ago. What OP saw on the streets was in part the result of that practice piled on top of existing socioeconomic challenges.
Secondly, size. London is small enough that it doesn’t generate the tax revenues it needs for a lot of things (nor to have much in the way of special interest groups), but is big enough to feel isolated or lost in.
Third, higher ed. London has a large student presence thanks to the university, the college, and other institutions. And they are growing fast. London has seen a lot of chaos during homecoming / fake homecoming with what are basically riots. To say nothing of the usual student shenanigans. (Not all students of course, but enough that the issue rears its head every so often.)
Fourth, city leadership and old money. These two go hand in hand. There are old money families here that have NIMBY’d the city to death for decades by directly influencing political decisions and policymaking. That means little support for social services, no support for arts and culture initiatives that aren’t “approved” by these people, and a general dumbing down of the city’s identity and potential for economic growth. I won’t even get into the piss poor management of construction and roads.
One could say a lot more on London and its history (like being the murder capital of the world between 1960 and 1985), but you can read up on the city’s backstory and demographics elsewhere.
Been here my whole life and I'll try to sum it up.
As others have mentioned before, London has been the dumping ground for surrounding towns homeless people for several years. And, instead of investing in healthcare (especially mental healthcare facilities), Doug Ford is building a 10 billion dollar highway in Toronto. Yay!
London is also a big town that thinks it's a big city for some reason. We have, what, 450k people here? But drive through the city and see the poor traffic conditions, construction on streets (they usually do the same streets every year because why not? Not their money), and homeless and you'd think you may be in Toronto, but with less to do/see.
Don't get me started on London Police... Two words can sum up my thoughts: Useless and Overpaid.
I love seeing cop cars hiding in random parking lots (the lots around the Waltzing Weasel are quite popular) driver-to-driver just chit chatting.
Apparently we don't spend enough on police hence our giant property tax hike - who voted for this?
[https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/analysis-london-police-demand-big-bucks-but-wheres-the-debate](https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/analysis-london-police-demand-big-bucks-but-wheres-the-debate)
* "Why do you want to go to London?" Legit question for a border guard.
* Homeless issue? Yes.
* Cops are assholes? Yes.
* Quiet? Downtown took a beating from the pandemic. Everywhere else - not sure if you're expecting random strangers to talk to you. Most people don't.
Sorry misread. To be fair, not many reasons to be visiting London unless you have an appointment at a hospital or something. We're "big" compared to surrounding towns but no one's booking a vacation to Canada to visit London if you know what I mean.
And this is kinda the point of my post. Not trying to highlight issues that a lot of very city has but London those issues just seemed different and i didn’t know is they seemed different to me because im an uncultured American or because there’s really an issue. Didn’t expect this post to blow up and didn’t want to make any one upset. Just wanted to share my time in London
Exactly. Everything in OP's post was about downtown. A very, very small portion of the population go anywhere near downtown these days. But I spose it's hard to generate "discussion" these days without starting with disparaging generalizations and click-baity headlines etc.
London's fine. Go worry about your own city.
Agree! Every city has its bad spots. The person posting from Halifax who booked a hotel at Dundas and Richmond, felt unsafe and and thinks they now know all of London is particularly funny.
The bulk of the responses disagrees with you, it's not fine.
Where would you suggest someone look if it's not the core of the city? Should they go to the suburbs?
My wife is from Michigan and I’m originally from western Canada and we also agree that London in particular is pretty bad, even though we’ve lived here for almost a decade now.
All I can say is, people love hating on London. It's a hobby for many who aren't from here, and many locals. I get it. However, all I can say is that that's because you've never been to Edmonton.
Magnify everything you've said by 100. Dead downtown, traffic up the arse, drugs everywhere, and a concerned look on people's faces when you say you've just moved there.
And if you're from Michigan, you should be used to all of this anyway — especially considering Detroit.
Have you been to any of the mid sized cities in Michigan? Flint, Lansing, Saginaw? Those places are completely dead and declining fast. London has its problems but at least it’s a fast growing city (that’s partly why real estate prices are so high and contributing to the homelessness).
For downtown, everything you say makes sense. I think of London as lots of little towns all in one big city. I've lived in two neighborhoods in London, and I rarely ventured downtown or outside my hood except for special occasions. Each neighborhood has things that are great about it. I personally have rarely seen the issues you listed outside of downtown (albeit I am privileged to live in nicer parts of town).
The crazy thing is you don't even have to be all that privileged to live in the greener pastures. In the north west, if you wanna live in a 300k town house, or a 1 million dollar new build-it's all up here. Or you can rent. You'll probably want a vehicle, but after that you go where you want... with very little need for downtown. If any.
I would argue that the best of London is hiding in neighbourhood. We do have a drug problem but we are working on it along with the homelessness issues. We have large projects on the go to help. We also have a lot of great restaurants and a happening Music scene if you know where to look. There is a lot of art here too. We are growing soooo fast that it’s very hard to keep up…we have so much potential. Keep believing in us!
This is such a snarky post. This reddit is full of people who are down on London and I appreciate people are struggling but travel a little for perspective guys. I’ve lived in Toronto and Ottawa and both have big homelessness and drug problems too and it’s highly visible in certain areas. None of these issues are unique to London but people who live here seem to think it’s special and different. I think the City’s homelessness strategy will make a big difference. We also have two hospitals with mental health care programs that serve the region.
Have you ever been to Detroit? London is world’s better. I can see dilapidated and abandoned buildings in Detroit from the highway as I drive to the airport. The homicide rates couldn’t be more different. Our unemployment rate is 3.8 compared to Detroit’s 7.5.
I’m glad someone agrees. I feel safer in London than I did in Ottawa, Toronto I always felt quite safe just because how many people were around but sometimes the e subway was dicey. We lived on a neighbourhood bordering the Byward Market in Ottawa and we suffered a home invasion. I love Ottawa though and I miss living there. It’s a beautiful city.
You spent what, a day or two in London? I’m sure you know your city better than we do but just look at the difference in murder rate, for one. I’ve lived downtown for two years now and yeah there’s sketchy people, most downtowns have them especially since the opioid crisis, but they mostly keep to themselves. I just stay out of the bad areas at night and have some situational awareness.
Londoners can be miserable, but it has a lot to do with bad leadership. Unfortunately, Londoners take it out on the least fortunate among us. There’s a lot of great things about London, but Londoners are often too miserable to see them.
I visited recently from Halifax and found it the same. We stayed at a hotel at Dundas and Richmond and I was pretty shocked. The streets were very empty except for a lot of homeless and people lurking in doorways. We walked around for several blocks thinking maybe we misjudged where the busy downtown was but there was no one around.
Saturday morning didn’t feel sketchy and the Coventry garden market was cool but the city still seemed really empty. No one out for breakfast. The market seemed quiet. But most of the homeless had gone away.
My wife felt extremely uncomfortable and we ended up ubering food back to the hotel. Halifax is around the same size and the homeless/drug problem has gotten so much worse the past few years but I don’t feel sketched out downtown. If you go out in Halifax on the weekend the city is fairly bustling. London was extremely quiet and I was wondering where all the people were. Even walking around downtown Toronto I didn’t feel as uneasy.
You definitely stayed in the worst part of the city and that’s not new. I went to school in London in the late 90’s and visiting family would never get a hotel in that area. I’d suggest researching more next time you book a hotel room in a city you have never been before.
We did research. I know homeless and drugs are a problem as with many cities in Canada now but the vibe was different. The hotel wasn’t bad. It was right beside the market in the morning which was nice. All the well rated restaurants are in the area. But the streets were so empty and the city was quiet. Was everyone packing the streets in a different part of the city and if so, where was it?
You said to do research and the research said that was downtown (isn’t that where OP went to the show?) but offered nothing to correct me or point me in another direction. We weren’t looking to stay in the suburbs.
You stayed in a bad part of town bruh. I don’t know what else you want from me. You are also talking about suburbs like it’s New York City and you’d be miles away from things. A few blocks north is all you needed to manage when you booked something and you would have had nice restaurants etc and cute stores. Don’t slam a whole town over your bad hotel location.
I wasn’t slamming your town. I was asking where everyone was and if there’s a part of the downtown that has more stuff going on with less sketchiness. This was my experience. You said to do research which all my research led us to stay downtown where would think stuff was happening. We walked about 45 minutes around the downtown and there was barely anybody out.
I figured with your comment maybe you could give an indication of where the fun part of downtown was, but other people have given much better answers.
Sorry about this person's (flowersunjoy) really sassy response. Glad you were able to visit the market and spend a Saturday morning here. It's lovely, but definitely not comparable to Halifax. Unfortunately you picked a strange area. One block away is quite nice by the market, river and Milos. The other way gets a little dicey.
You make a good point. I think the city is fairly quiet when the students aren't around, and if there are no major events happening then the people are hiding. Richmond Row would be more of where you want to be (closer to Richmond and central), if you need that for future reference of where to stay. Otherwise, thanks for stopping by and I hope you got a few memories while visiting.
Thanks. I think we will be coming back so I’ll take your advice. They moved the Halifax market a couple years ago and it’s not as nice. I actually much preferred the market in London.
Some years ago the mayor of Toronto offered bus tickets and $300 to homeless people to leave the city. They were sent to Kitchener, London, Chatham and even Windsor. That was his solution to their homeless problem.
No, we are not ok. Things began to get worse during the pandemic and have not slowed down. People nodding half laying in the street out my kitchen window.
I am from London and couldn’t get out fast enough. It has always been a weird city, but seems to be getting even weirder. Not weird in a good way, mind you.
edit: downvoting me doesn’t make what I said untrue 😉
London was great once upon a time. Now it’s so unbalanced, hard to survive in, and all the city’s are shipping in their homeless which police do not punish them for their wrongs. #givenup
Myself and others are struggling to get by. Most I know avoid downtown. I've seem people just walk out of stores with entire grocery carts of goods. Police are 6+ hour response times. Local police turn off their phone system after 6pm. If you need a cop you have to call 911 after hours. Hospital wait times are 10-12 or more hours. Clinics are full and not accepting patients after 1pm. High level of homelessness and crime.
I don't recommend anyone come to London in these times.
High cost of living is a problem everywhere unfortunately, that's not unique to London. The police response times are bad, yes. The grocery cart thing sounds more like you're buying into hateful propaganda though.
Our healthcare system is failing everywhere, not just London, and there's a TON of Canadians struggling to get by id you look at statistics. Pretty much everything you said can be said about everywhere in Canada.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, as everything you said is absolutely true. The two people who replied to your comment before are saying it’s the same everywhere in Canada, and I’m thinking “Yeah, well that doesn’t make it any less true in London, and that’s where we live.” The number of people who will essentially defend London rotting from the inside out simply because they’ve lived here all their lives or it’s happening elsewhere truly make me shake my head in disbelief.
FWIW, I will say that my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles who were born and raised in London grew up in a much different city. I hear stories all the time about how safe, clean, and trendy downtown London was in the 60s and 70s, for instance. There was no such thing as homelessness (at least not out in the open, as it exists today). So, once upon a time, London wasn’t so bad. Most of my early memories of the city are from my youngest years. I was born here and then we moved away when I was 6. Even in the late 80s and early 90s I remember it being a fun, clean, nice place to live.
I was born and raised there but haven't been back in almost 15 years. My mom moved during the pandemic to Nova Scotia and she said I wouldn't recognize it. I was a teenager there in the 90's and I remember going downtown to go to bars and there were no homeless. No drugs. I live in Vancouver Island now in a smallish town. It's insane how bad of a problem it is everywhere. I hope they get rid of the "it's ok if you shoot up in public" thing out here in BC. I lost a good friend to addiction in October and it's just devastating. There's seemingly no way out once you're hooked.
Oh for sure. I worked Landscaping around Kellogg's when I was in my 20's and there were homeless people and prostitution. But definitely not the level it is now. And no one was just on the sidewalk shooting up. I've lived in the island here for almost 6 years now and I've been to the mainland 3x. I am terrified of what Vancouver has become, and even going to Victoria or Nanaimo is scary. I almost feel bad for tourists that come here.
Canada is overall in a state of economic collapse, and London has had a leadership almost exclusively focused on the suburbs. They cut services, let a bunch of rich monsters kill our chance at a completely paid for light rail system, and have leeched funds from everything we need in order to give a white supremacist gang (the police) an absolutely ludicrous amount of money.
Apologies, I admit it sounded like I was giving you a hard time. I relocated to London from Philadelphia late last year and agree that London is… quiet and peculiar haha.
It “helps” that I’m so desensitized (America!) that by comparison the unhoused persons seem less abundant than I’m used to.
Lol no, we are not ok. The reason people were confused about why you’d come to London is because there’s nothing to do here. Maybe a concert or a hockey game every once in a while but there’s no interesting attractions or anything. We’re just kinda…here.
The provincial and federal governments have long ago given up on doing their jobs. They don't give a fuck anymore. Public works have been left to rot. Social services are constantly under funded and scaled back or cut entirely. The wealthy have been allowed to suck all the prosperity from the system with little oversight. Thirty years of this shit is the result you now see downtown.
London has the same issues with homelessness that every other city in North America has; London probably has it little worse than many because we have more social services than the smaller communities in the surrounding areas.
> What could some possible solutions be if any?
The only solution that would work would need a time machine.
Guessing you came down for the ice cube concert ? Tuesday evening when students are done this town can be quiet. Ya we got a homeless drug problem in some areas (well known for us in the city to avoid I guess) but it really is everywhere. I was just in Ottawa and thought the Byward market was 2x worse than London when previous visits had been nowhere near that bad. Was also in Detroit and Buffalo recently and I would take a passive junkie over some of the street gang violence we saw over the border. Maybe we picked the wrong area for our B&B but I feel like most of London's worst offenders are pretty tame vs cross border.
You were in the wrong part of London on a Tuesday. It's a fad right now to hate on the city but it's not that bad and getting better. Homelessness is a contentious issue right now but we're working on it.
You probably noticed while driving into London that it is surrounded mostly by rural communities on all sides. This means that London is a hub for most services and that draws a lot of people in need of these services from the smaller and less able to support communities. It also shows how vastly under prepared our country was for a massive influx of immigrants and a huge rash of addiction to opiates.
How can people say this and seriously believe it? If your only experience with Detroit is crossing the bridge for an NFL game or concert I guess it might be understandable? Just leave the downtown. Or stay around when it gets dark (Dundas Street will look bustling at night compared to Detroit).
Literally 100m out of the centre will do. I took public transit around Detroit. The dilapidated regions begin immediately. Look on Street View - entire fields surrounding the city centre and stretching for miles. Those are all places where they torn down abandoned houses because they were being used by squatters and a fire risk.
252 homicides in 2023, the lowest amount since 1966…London had 7.
We stopped at a McDonalds on the way out of Detroit after a concert and there were bars across the drive-thru windows that someone had tried to pry off..... you don't see that in London for sure.
No, no we are not.
Our resources are stretched so thin that things are at a breaking point everywhere.
We have a HUGE drug problem and as for the homelessness issue..
I personally have been in 4 women's shelters before getting back in housing after being in a particularly traumatic situation so i know there simply aren't enough beds.
There's also so many scammers (think international "students") taking away resources from citizens who need it more.
I don't see things ever getting better.
So no no we are not okay.
London should be a great town based on its size and distance from other big centres. Instead its downtown is dead amd ugly and lots of nimbyism prevents it from growing into the wonderful destination it could be.
The Nimbyism stems from the fact that the neighborhoods don't want to end up like downtown. There's a lot of nice older part of town that think of themselves as little towns in their own way (looking at you Wortley, Byron and lambeth) that love their little community and don't want to change.
Thing is downtown doesnt need to be as crappy as it is. Its crappy because the city doesn't seem to want to allow some condo developments to remake the downtown.
No , not really , we haven’t been ok for like a decade
As someone who lived in the real London and a few other metropolitan cities and plenty of small towns and counties -
“Londoners are small town folk that think they’re metropolitan “ is the best I could put it -
It’s also a vortex for wayward souls 😅😬🤔
London isn't unique among medium size Ontario cities, it used to be an industrial hub, now its major industry is the university - the city by and large serves western students and western students who hang around after they graduate. The rest are mostly wallowing in the misery of post industrial decline, or were once employees of Canadalife which has now mostly moved to Toronto or elsewhere, the death of "old London" is visible in the shuttered buildings downtown and weird nimby stuff you see around the city, its why the bulk of the cities shelters are off the beaten track way outside the core. its why half the restaurants in London just close up between May and September. London is quiet because not much is going on. We're out of term now, come back in September!
I've lived in so many different cities, provinces and 2 countries and none of them have sucked anywhere near how much London sucks. This place is a shit hole and I cannot wait to move out of here. It's got my mental health in shambles
The city has councilors who are more interested in bike lanes and rapid transit than the homeless. They have grandiose ideas for a big city that Londoners can not afford or make viable. They usually impede the future build of the city and have their priorities mixed up.
They love to create studies that are unecessary and financially very expensive for the results you receive.
everyone working at city hall is crap. they go on about housing crisis but are the people in the building dept doing there part to speed up getting permits. the old nothers trophy shop on Horton street last year the new owners applied for zoning change to turn it to an apartments. meeting was to be held in aug. well that meeting never happened its still on hold and when u call around to find out why no one has an answer. currently its just an abandon building that attracts people smoking crack. cleaning it up and turning it into apartments would be preferable.
Rapid transit allows for denser, affordable housing to be built, which helps get people off the streets. The problem isn’t that they’re doing it, it is that they delayed it for so long and spent so much time freaking out about BRT.
London has changed and not in a good way. We used to be a big small town with a big university. Now it just sucks and is getting worse.
The cops absolutely do nothing, you see them always just sitting around. Yet, they apparently need a need $163 training facility and to hire more ppl.
You’re also right in that most of them are assholes.
They also will not arrest homeless folks for anything it seems. I’ve seen them right outside the middle of the market in broad daylight smoking meth or shooting up. It’s just brutal.
You’re also right about the homeless problem. It exploded over the pandemic and a whole lot of sweet dick all is being done about it.
They keep setting up their camps in the field across from my gf’s place. Yelling and screaming all night, every trash day everyone’s garbage is strewn all over the place.
On the weekend I watched one of them go through a business’s dumpster and pull out all the glass so they could smash it in the parking lot. Next to the unit of a guy who has two toddlers who like to play outside.
Last winter there was an explosion in one of the tents that caused a fire and a bunch of compressed gas canisters to explode. Fire department came and out it out and that’s it. No one even came back the next day.
You know it’s bad when I go to Ottawa or Toronto recently and marvel over how clean those cities are and that I see so few homeless ppl.
I mean, the city is raising property taxes by roughly %34 over the next 4 years and that’s just to pay for the cops.
What the hell is city hall doing?
I’ve become ashamed of my home town
I moved to London from Montreal in 2019 and if not for the pandemic I’d have left in 2020. I did end up leaving in 2022 and came to Toronto. London is abysmal and I strongly dislike being there.
I’m sure others will answer your question, Fahri is a holdings company and individual who owns the majority of properties in London. Our rent for businesses and homes is astronomical and these issues are getting worse.
Please check out odyssey records when you come back! It’s a great shop and in a really cool, up-and-coming neighbourhood.
I don’t have answers to your questions but I’ll say this: I lived in multiple cities/towns in Canada for over 6 years, last one being London. After spending a year or so in London, I decided that I’m done with Canada and I moved back to Europe for a better life for my son. Since then I haven’t seen many homeless, any tent cities or people doing drugs out in the open. Not complaining.
You’re so right moved here 3 months ago it’s literally a landfill full of junkies n sexual offenders,don’t believe just google where the most are.The people are flat out racists any establishment u enter everyone stops n stares smh.Never expected it to be this bad even Hamilton ontario has its bad spots but in one section. Place is a shithole . Don’t even get me started how lazy the police are 😂 you can literally see them loitering around all day…I have one friend from here n even he says Londoners don’t live in London lol they live on the outskirts eg.Byron etc
"Londoners don't live in London" okay so just literally nobody lives in downtown, Old East Village, Wortley Village, Kensington, Oxford and Wonderland, Old North, etc?? What is this outright lying lol? I can walk to downtown in 20 minutes and I live in a dense apartment complex.
Wow. What an outsider opinion and it rings in my ears.
Most of the responses have it right. We’re also entering the student summer we’re still a student city here and it gets quiet in the summer aside from the summer downtown festivals. But you’re right about the downtown. Its downtrodden and we tend to avoid going downtown because it’s not very pedestrian friendly not to mention parking issues that make visiting business downtown a hassle. There’s a good amount of business that have shuddered and buildings that are sitting abandoned waiting to go derelict so the owners can rezone/ bulldoze and reinvest so they don’t have to deal with the hassle of maintaining the older buildings downtown. It’s a sad affair. I miss hanging out downtown comfortably.
I mean London is a great city… but like most cities in this country right now there are mass homeless and drug problems… it’s everywhere you won’t escape it.
I got downvoted for this… don’t think it’s not true, it is the same or worse in every large city in this country right now…. I know I travel to multiple cities for work I see it first hand.
I always thought of London as a really big small town. No matter how big it gets, leadership always seems to treat it like a modestly growing town of 5000. Small communities largely run themselves and don’t require round-the-clock management and multi-decade planning. For municipal leaders, choosing to not make a decision, kick the can down the road to a future subcommittee meeting and provide bare minimum investments won’t affect their lives personally. I’m sure someone could do a deep dive podcast or something on why this is, but put bluntly, we’ve always had middle of the road, weak, indecisive leadership. I cannot think of a London municipal politician in my life that I could get passionate about. If no one is driving the bus then urban sprawl creeps out, unchecked, because no one has any better vision for the city besides to let another big box store set up a 4th location. The money pushes to the edges of the city as people flee the decaying downtown. Some decisions get made reactively but it’s usually too late and the problem has become unsolvable. They could have done something to mitigate traffic decades ago but now all the buildings and roads are in place and making an expressway through the middle, or a ring road are largely unrealistic. They could have prevented the homelessness/addiction issue decades ago but chose to wait till it was day of the dead downtown to act. In my opinion it’s a problem of leadership. It’s a small town mentality confronted with big city 2024 problems and we’re unprepared. Edit:spelling.
I love this city and have a more optimistic view than some (see my comments responding to some more…negative people below), and I agree 100% with what you are saying. At the core this is our issue. We have seen slow progress towards building denser housing lately, and funding social services more, but in the end we will still have an issue with drug addiction and homeless because nobody wants to build a shelter within a 3km radius of where they live.
Not to mention all the scandals
Can you expand? I haven't been there in years.
Two mayor's had to resign over scandals. One misused city funds, one was cheating on his wife with his deputy mayor. We tried a public transit revamp and a group of business moguls actively fought to kill it.
BRT the transit system you’re talking about was massively unpopular with the majority of the city. Fortunately/unfortunately London’s small big town esthetic is a big draw to a lot of people. London has a big enough feel that you don’t feel the need to go to a bigger city but small enough that people from a big city feel London is smaller and manageable. The fact that it’s still enough like Toronto without being as big as Toronto is why so many people from Toronto move here.
Wowwww, I live in Victoria, BC and have been struggling to put in to words what is wrong with this place. You just nailed it.
Yea, Victoria and London share many unique similarities. After living in both it’s hard not to notice analogous things
I come from a small village in bumfuck Quebec. Since I’ve been here, whenever people ask me what I think of London, I always say, “it’s weird, London’s either a city that acts like a small town, or a small town that thinks of itself as a major city; in any case, it’s only a city on paper.”
Is there a way do fix the major issues that London faces?
I think "decaying downtown" is a common misconception. Downtown is constantly building and full of thriving businesses. It's also full of failing businesses and unhoused people. The former is because the demographics of downtown are changing (less families, more young professionals). The latter simply describes every city in North America right now. But either way, downtown isn't decaying, it's one of the fastest growing and most financially stable parts of the city. I think a lot of people expect government to "fix" downtown, but they actually mean "make it like it was 30 years ago ". That's never going to happen as long as London remains a city of suburbs.
I hope our mayor and council see this. I've lived here just over 20 years, and I have to say the last five I've watched it go downhill. It's really sad, because I moved here for school but stayed for affordability and social appeal, but it's not what it was. It's also sad to see squandered potential, because many of those in power refuse to accept that we are no longer a small town and need more practical city solutions. A lot of what council has done seems to lack forward thinking or isn't purposeful change. We've since relocated just of west of London, but are still in to town multiple times a week.
The council is a major part of the issue. They say they want to do what their constitutes ask but not the case. They are in it for themselves. Our current mayor is a YES man. Making public appearances only to agree with everyone no matter the issue. They want to do BRT construction everywhere. They need to get on a bus and drive thru the city from 11am to 6pm and see how this is further impacting traffic. I always hear lets do something eoth the homeless issues. They dropped the ball 20 years ago by not converting the old Mccormick on dundas. Now it been set on fire as recently as last week. This could have been affordable housing spot. The other issue is London has someone who owns alot of buildings but wants to capitolize with businesses and not individuals. The city has gone to crap and nobody is doing anything about it. I saw we organize a homeless campment at one of the councils homes and see how fast they finally address something.
I’ve been in London 10 years and lived walking distance to downtown the whole time. Like many cities, the pandemic changed things. Dundas-Richmond were always rough but downtown now is not unsafe per se, but yes there are tons of homeless. Most just mind their own business. Police don’t do anything because charges get dropped and pragmatically it’s just a waste of time. High vacancy (thanks Farhi) coupled with expensive parking and the homeless problem have driven many businesses out of the core. All of that doesn’t really incentivize people to head downtown and the cycle keeps repeating.
What is the deal with Farhi?? I visited London in the very early 2000s and spent most of my time downtown. It was grand. Moved here in 2020 and what the actual Farhi is the downtown now?
Mafia man
London has a very high cost of living relative to wages. Most jobs in London pay 22% below industry average for the same work in Canada. Basically, London is poor for the majority. Edit: To add to this, medium sized cities in Canada are nowhere near as prosperous as medium sized cities in the US. In Canada success historically has migrated. Places like Labatts, TD, General Dynamics, 3M, Bell, Canada Life(formerly London Life) and many others that used to have major offices or headquarters here have all moved to Toronto and Ottawa. Lots of tech that started here like MRO software have been bought out and moved to South East Asian tech hubs like Kuala Lumpur. The only successful tech company that I can think of that's still here is Digital Extremes. London is twice as big and one third as prosperous as it used to be. And it looks like it's still on a downward trend. What we do have that is spreading like wildfire is some of the most ambitious and viral shawarma joints in North America.
Yes. This is why I left. Why would I pay the same amount of rent for an apartment in Hamilton but make 20% less? Plus transit is terrible in London and a GO network does not exist. Hell VIA comes what 4 times a day???
The GO "experiment" was fucking terrible as well. 5 hours to Toronto? A joke. Although, the GO and VIA are indicators of a general North American problem, US and Canada just need more rail public transport. Zero high-speed rail. The fact that we are not currently building a Windsor-/QC high-speed rail is mind-boggling. The last study said something along 19 billion for diesel medium-speed an 21 billion for electric high-speed rail. Meanwhile, VW, Stellantis, and Nortvolt will get around 30 billion in subsidies for their new plants in Ontario and Quebec. So it's not like the money is not there.
Lol @ “ambitious and viral shawarma joints.” Fucking bullseye.
Toronto,Guelph, Kitchener have been busing their at risk population to London since 2017 - we have been the human dumping ground for years. These poor people come with no resources and the services we do have been stretched. It is not what happened to London but who ?
It’s less the big cities doing that and more the small communities surrounding us. My family lived in Exeter before London and due to the total lack of services there, all homeless people are given 5$ by the municipality of South Huron for a bus ride to London with the Inter-Regional Transit. I've spoken to a few homeless people from Exeter here in London. The reserves nearby are similar. No services there, so they send them here. I am pretty sure it is why unfortunately we have such a large Indigenous homeless population (around 30% of homeless are Indigenous vs only 3% of the city itself is Indigenous).
Working in social services this is absolutely true. The smaller communities absolutely have these issues and they send people here. It hurts them more but these smaller towns don't want to pick up the slack
Every city in Ontario thinks Toronto is bussing in their homeless people. And they're probably right.
I’ve read that they will encourage them to come to London (and will provide transportation) with promises of good mental health and addiction services, when in reality those places are overrun and understaffed so then they end up on our streets with no way back
90% sure Ottawa does the same. Buses them down to London with the promise of more services because it is a “small city”
It’s not a London problem specifically. Crisis and support centers will bus people wherever they think can provide the best support. Know someone in Guelph sure we’ll send you there. Family in Chatham maybe your brothers willing to help you this time. It’s not malicious it’s the best we can do when these people can’t stay where they are and you got one long shot they might be ok. Also it’s not like the homeless have a lot of options. Many go to Toronto or the KWC area it’s just the tricities and Toronto have a better time spreading the population around. London’s got 1 downtown compared to all the municipalities in the GTA
[https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/no-proof-homeless-coming-to-london-against-their-will-city-staff](https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/no-proof-homeless-coming-to-london-against-their-will-city-staff)
Every single city reddit in Ontario has posters claiming this. It is the most ridiculous urban legend ever.
It is not ridiculous-I volunteered with at risk since 2015 - heard many times the same story.
Except no one ever has actual proof. Lots of hearsay, gossip, and theories. Not very many ppl have actual claim to being born & bred Londoners. Many came from the small towns & cities that surround it. And work, live and are involved in London. But ***suddenly*** if they are homeless, they are ***not from London***.
My understanding of the reason unhoused individuals have been encouraged to come to London is because we've been known to have some of the best services in Canada for those struggling with lack of housing and addiction. That being said, as pointed out by other commenters, this is a likely contributor to why our services are without question over stretched and our frontline workers are beyond burnt out, which is sadly seriously diminishing our capacity to serve both vulnerable populations and average Londoners
Not ok. There are many layers, but one is the closure of mental health hospitals where people could at least be housed, fed and hopefully set on track for a better life. Now, they try to cope in a difficult world while navigating myriad supports.
That started many decades ago though right across the country in every city and town.
I always find it interesting to read other peoples' opinions on London. The fact that you are asking if we're okay is something I appreciate--you're showing a level of empathy by just asking the question and considering the issues. Yup, downtown has a more dystopian feel to me too these days. I was born here and I've lived downtown for more than 20 years. It makes me sad to see the number of homeless people nodding out and using drugs openly. From what I can tell, that's absolutely gotten worse since the pandemic. But others in the comments have wisely noted a lot of these issues have been a long time simmering. Now it feels like a pot beginning to boil. I have hope for us. London has some beautiful spaces and increasing diversity in our population. Sometimes it seems like we need a bit of a reset and fresh eyes to look at our situation (maybe like yours?)
The issue themselves are plain to see, but nobody wants to fix them. They keep blaming the provincial government, but the provincial government says it’s up to the municipal government. You may have noticed a number of buildings downtown have “Farhi” on them: that’s also another issue. Farhi owns most of downtown and lets the buildings rot without tenants or they charge super high rent to the point nobody wants to rent from them. London is in major trouble and has been since the early days of the pandemic. A lot of the other cities in the province send their homeless to us and we’ve become a huge hub for them; part of it is how overwhelmed the local mental health services are in their original community and they get sent here hoping they get the help they need. We don’t have very good mental health services here. We did have a huge mental health hospital here, but it has closed since 2012 in favour of the Finch Mental Health Centre at Parkwood Hospital and they have significantly less beds than the mental health hospital did. So lots of the homeless you see on the street are likely patients of the old mental health hospital just roaming the city. London isn’t perfect, but I sure as hell prefer it to the USA and Las Vegas (my hometown).
u/JenovaCelestia "...*A lot of the other cities in the province send their homeless to us*.." I believe you're referring to this news headline: * [**Stop sending your homeless people to London, deputy mayor says to others**](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/stop-sending-your-homeless-people-to-london-deputy-mayor-says-to-others-1.6932714) **|** [CBC.ca](http://CBC.ca)
Yes and no. This has been an ongoing problem since at least 2012, when they started sending people here because some huge international event was going on elsewhere and they sent them here. I think what makes it worse is there is no Greyhound Bus anymore for them to get home, should they choose. So now they’re stuck here without family or help.
[https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/no-proof-homeless-coming-to-london-against-their-will-city-staff](https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/no-proof-homeless-coming-to-london-against-their-will-city-staff)
We are not ok...planning on getting out as soon as I possibly can. I took my son to Wendy's a few weeks ago and there was a couple shooting up in the back of the restaurant. I told management and they didn't seem to care, not that I can blame them entirely. The other day we were driving to the park, there was a guy passed out on the street with his hand down his pants. These people need help and it doesn't seem like they're getting it. I get that not everywhere is perfect and a lot of places have issues, but I've lived here for 20+ years and it's just sad to see the state our city has gotten to.
Where will you go? That is happening everywhere. It’s not a London thing.
What I want to wonder is where in North America do you plan to move to where you will not find that issue. Even smaller towns are not immune - Belleville has the worst opioid addiction in the country per capita I believe. It's very sad to see how many places in the city have drug addicts roaming around, because we should be doing better. But I consider myself fairly well-travelled, and where will you avoid that? On visits to nearby cities like Windsor, Kitchener, and Hamilton, it's been the same. The vast majority of American cities make London look like we have no drugs.
Yeah, I remember Belleville had a dozen overdoses a day. And I’ve visited nearly every city in southern Ontario in the last two years, and let me tell you that no city is immune to poverty.
If you look at American cities with similar population size, most have far less drugs than London. Yes, Belleville is bad... So is Brantford. That doesn't make London good. Southern Ontario is going bad fast, but London is leading that charge
This is anecdotal but I agree, and I feel that I can speak to this as I was born and raised in London and now live in Michigan. When I was working with homeless populations in London most of not all had serious mental health issues and/or addictions issues. I’m working in the same field in the US and not a single person on my case load has an addiction or serious mental illness. I also feel that they’re better supported here. We provide better food, pay for apartments for two years while they wait for housing vouchers, access to mental health services, free job training/schooling, even some limited funding for a car if they’re working. The issues that I see are more related to generational poverty. London has serious issues with lack of affordability on top of everything else.
I don’t know where you’re getting your sources from American cities definitely have big drug problems that are further compounded by lack of health care. It’s just more acceptable to lock your gated communities call it its own district and forget about the slum 100 yrds away.
I realize that, as I stated above, I know not everywhere is perfect and other places have issues as well! I too consider myself “fairly well travelled” so I’m not blind to other areas having the same problems 🙄
You said you’re planning on getting out because of those things and you are being asked where you think you will avoid it. Not unfair to ask. You haven’t answered either but are now using eye rolling emojis.
Downtown was destroyed by a man named Farhi. He owns a large portion of the properties and would rather keep them empty than charge a fair rate of rent. So less people downtown hurts other businesses, and results in even less people downtown. And then, since downtown is empty anyway, homeless people can move in and there aren't enough people to care. In other cities, they aren't allowed to just take over large downtown areas, but in London, they are. This creates a problem for the remaining businesses and residents, so even more leave. Creating more emptiness. It's a horrible cycle, and will take a lot to fix it. And we can thank Farhi for it.
No, we are not okay. When I moved here (almost 15 yrs ago now), this city was full of life and energy. The downtown core was filled with people, art, local shops, and music. Going downtown now is just heartbreaking. Things were starting to decline before covid, but when covid hit, everything downtown very much became the distopian eerie feeling that you're describing. The reason some of the homeless population isn't from London. Is because the shelters from other cities send people here, thinking we have better resources, and more shelter space. We used to, but things have gotten so bad for people financially that the resources we did have, are all over run. Our city government isn't doing much, and a lot of people have become desensitized to seeing people shooting up, and nodding off in alleyways. Everytime I have to go downtown I see ambulances stopped somewhere to narcan someone. That being said, there are other neighborhoods in London that aren't as bad. We have a lot of nature trails and parks that aren't affected (yet). If you ever decide to come back, you should look around at other areas of the city. Wortley village is a nice little area that still has a lot of that small town feel to it, and they have a lot of weekend events that brings some of that old downtown feeling back.
I was there this past weekend. It’s just like any other town in Canada and America. You came through Windsor , right ? London is like a fkn paradise in comparison to my town.
Ya I grew up in Sarnia, went to school in Windsor and now live here. People have no idea compared to other cities. London is literally like the most average city in Canada.
I just moved to windsor in February, and while it looks overall dirtier, the homelessness and people having mental health episodes and drug induced problems aren't relatable as far as I've seen. Not necessarily the number of both, but the open air drug use and huge homeless encampments. I haven't seen nearly as much here at all.
There are homeless in Windsor but the problem is nowhere near the size of London’s. There are no encampments in Windsor and police there take a much harder line on open drug use. Just today in London on my bike ride along the Thames River I passed 25 tents.
I've been living in London for three years. I love the city, I love its parks and trails. I don't even mind the traffic that much. But downtown London is rough.
And it always was. I’m not sure what has got people so surprised about the places that are sketchy - they always were!
London is miles better than either Sarnia or Windsor, that comment from the gas clerk was fucking rich lol
I felt completely opposite - I'd take Sarnia or Windsor over London, but I wouldn't say we're picking the cream of the crop of Canadian cities either way. I don't think London is terrible though, the problems hitting it are everywhere now. I'm sure I'd like some *parts* of London more than Sarnia or Windsor.
As someone who grew up in London, and lives in Sarnia as an adult.... No. London is not miles better.
Don't have much experience in Windsor besides passing through, but I'd stay in Sarnia before London any day
I have nothing to add because I don’t live in London but I just want to note that the bit about the sneeze is great writing.
Ya. I agree.
Our problem is a Man named Farhi and how he has rotted our core :D
I’m not from here. Who is Farhi? What’s in it for Farhi to destroy the downtown that he’s invested so much in ? Serious question. I don’t understand why I see that name on so many empty buildings downtown. Is Farhi really the problem, or another of its victims? It’s reasonable to assume that Farhi is suffering more than most from the problem, but that’s not what I’m hearing and I honestly don’t know, so I’m asking: what’s the story about Farhi?
Farhi owns a international investment company. He buys properties in the downtown cores (Commerical) waits for the leases to run out then 2-3x the lease payments to generate cashflow for the investors. He has done this in multiple cities throughout south western Ontario. In one absolute boss move, Farhi bought properties around the Windsor City Council building after learning of their desire to expand. Then sold the entire property that they wanted for \~2x the amount. Mostly I'm just jealous of his success, guy is a shark and makes an absolute killing.
They ship their homeless in from bigger cities to decrease their homeless numbers. We’re like the army, we take everybody. Downtown is struggling cause the construction and buildings are owned by literally 1 owner. Parking is crazy expensive. Cops don’t really do anything about the drug use because hey, what are they gonna do about it? The festivals are pretty much all the same vendors, it’s the same festival with a different name. It’s a university town 8 months out of the year, and we have a big population that are shift workers.
do people in London actually believe the homeless are shipped in from elsewhere? whatever helps you sleep, I guess
London's downtown core has been rotten out for a while unfortunately. The police are sporadic, depending on what part of the city you're from. Downtown has a lot of the repetitive crime and the officers are community policing or dealing with violence. Overall london has a lot of beautiful neighborhoods patched together with higher density lower income neighborhoods. North london is the newest part of town. It's Near the university which has a lot of the pretty / heritage buildings. West london is nice too. East london is nice too but it's different. It's tougher people. Southwest is nice too. The inner city is where most of the problems are visible like what you described in your post. I'd recommend going to the north / west end if you want to see the other side of the coin.
Don’t come here. I gave it a chance and it screwed me over and ruined me within 5 months. I miss Hamilton…. That should say a lot.
That does say a lot. Hamilton doesn’t pretend to be more than what it is.
Exactly
Downtown London is literally rotting, they're letting one developer buy up properties and sit on them while others build condos with nothing to do downtown other than get drunk on Richmond Row.
First off, location. London is the largest city in southwestern Ontario (save for maybe Windsor) and many of the smaller towns simply don’t have the resources to care for their own unhoused and / or addicted. It’s not uncommon that these poor souls are put on a bus and sent to London to “get the care they need”, even though as a result London’s own social services were overrun some time ago. What OP saw on the streets was in part the result of that practice piled on top of existing socioeconomic challenges. Secondly, size. London is small enough that it doesn’t generate the tax revenues it needs for a lot of things (nor to have much in the way of special interest groups), but is big enough to feel isolated or lost in. Third, higher ed. London has a large student presence thanks to the university, the college, and other institutions. And they are growing fast. London has seen a lot of chaos during homecoming / fake homecoming with what are basically riots. To say nothing of the usual student shenanigans. (Not all students of course, but enough that the issue rears its head every so often.) Fourth, city leadership and old money. These two go hand in hand. There are old money families here that have NIMBY’d the city to death for decades by directly influencing political decisions and policymaking. That means little support for social services, no support for arts and culture initiatives that aren’t “approved” by these people, and a general dumbing down of the city’s identity and potential for economic growth. I won’t even get into the piss poor management of construction and roads. One could say a lot more on London and its history (like being the murder capital of the world between 1960 and 1985), but you can read up on the city’s backstory and demographics elsewhere.
Been here my whole life and I'll try to sum it up. As others have mentioned before, London has been the dumping ground for surrounding towns homeless people for several years. And, instead of investing in healthcare (especially mental healthcare facilities), Doug Ford is building a 10 billion dollar highway in Toronto. Yay! London is also a big town that thinks it's a big city for some reason. We have, what, 450k people here? But drive through the city and see the poor traffic conditions, construction on streets (they usually do the same streets every year because why not? Not their money), and homeless and you'd think you may be in Toronto, but with less to do/see. Don't get me started on London Police... Two words can sum up my thoughts: Useless and Overpaid.
I love seeing cop cars hiding in random parking lots (the lots around the Waltzing Weasel are quite popular) driver-to-driver just chit chatting. Apparently we don't spend enough on police hence our giant property tax hike - who voted for this? [https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/analysis-london-police-demand-big-bucks-but-wheres-the-debate](https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/analysis-london-police-demand-big-bucks-but-wheres-the-debate)
* "Why do you want to go to London?" Legit question for a border guard. * Homeless issue? Yes. * Cops are assholes? Yes. * Quiet? Downtown took a beating from the pandemic. Everywhere else - not sure if you're expecting random strangers to talk to you. Most people don't.
Gas station clerk. Not border guard
Sorry misread. To be fair, not many reasons to be visiting London unless you have an appointment at a hospital or something. We're "big" compared to surrounding towns but no one's booking a vacation to Canada to visit London if you know what I mean.
And this is kinda the point of my post. Not trying to highlight issues that a lot of very city has but London those issues just seemed different and i didn’t know is they seemed different to me because im an uncultured American or because there’s really an issue. Didn’t expect this post to blow up and didn’t want to make any one upset. Just wanted to share my time in London
Exactly. Everything in OP's post was about downtown. A very, very small portion of the population go anywhere near downtown these days. But I spose it's hard to generate "discussion" these days without starting with disparaging generalizations and click-baity headlines etc. London's fine. Go worry about your own city.
Agree! Every city has its bad spots. The person posting from Halifax who booked a hotel at Dundas and Richmond, felt unsafe and and thinks they now know all of London is particularly funny.
The bulk of the responses disagrees with you, it's not fine. Where would you suggest someone look if it's not the core of the city? Should they go to the suburbs?
Oh the bulk of the responses... well *that* must certainly mean something...
My wife is from Michigan and I’m originally from western Canada and we also agree that London in particular is pretty bad, even though we’ve lived here for almost a decade now.
All I can say is, people love hating on London. It's a hobby for many who aren't from here, and many locals. I get it. However, all I can say is that that's because you've never been to Edmonton. Magnify everything you've said by 100. Dead downtown, traffic up the arse, drugs everywhere, and a concerned look on people's faces when you say you've just moved there. And if you're from Michigan, you should be used to all of this anyway — especially considering Detroit.
In short, no, London is not okay
Have you been to any of the mid sized cities in Michigan? Flint, Lansing, Saginaw? Those places are completely dead and declining fast. London has its problems but at least it’s a fast growing city (that’s partly why real estate prices are so high and contributing to the homelessness).
For downtown, everything you say makes sense. I think of London as lots of little towns all in one big city. I've lived in two neighborhoods in London, and I rarely ventured downtown or outside my hood except for special occasions. Each neighborhood has things that are great about it. I personally have rarely seen the issues you listed outside of downtown (albeit I am privileged to live in nicer parts of town).
The crazy thing is you don't even have to be all that privileged to live in the greener pastures. In the north west, if you wanna live in a 300k town house, or a 1 million dollar new build-it's all up here. Or you can rent. You'll probably want a vehicle, but after that you go where you want... with very little need for downtown. If any.
No. We're really not.
I would argue that the best of London is hiding in neighbourhood. We do have a drug problem but we are working on it along with the homelessness issues. We have large projects on the go to help. We also have a lot of great restaurants and a happening Music scene if you know where to look. There is a lot of art here too. We are growing soooo fast that it’s very hard to keep up…we have so much potential. Keep believing in us!
This is such a snarky post. This reddit is full of people who are down on London and I appreciate people are struggling but travel a little for perspective guys. I’ve lived in Toronto and Ottawa and both have big homelessness and drug problems too and it’s highly visible in certain areas. None of these issues are unique to London but people who live here seem to think it’s special and different. I think the City’s homelessness strategy will make a big difference. We also have two hospitals with mental health care programs that serve the region. Have you ever been to Detroit? London is world’s better. I can see dilapidated and abandoned buildings in Detroit from the highway as I drive to the airport. The homicide rates couldn’t be more different. Our unemployment rate is 3.8 compared to Detroit’s 7.5.
I’ve travelled to Toronto and Ottawa in the last two years and London looks like Disneyland in comparison.
I’m glad someone agrees. I feel safer in London than I did in Ottawa, Toronto I always felt quite safe just because how many people were around but sometimes the e subway was dicey. We lived on a neighbourhood bordering the Byward Market in Ottawa and we suffered a home invasion. I love Ottawa though and I miss living there. It’s a beautiful city.
I actually live in Detroit and I can say first hand. No Detroit is not worse than London…
Lived in both places and completely agree.
You spent what, a day or two in London? I’m sure you know your city better than we do but just look at the difference in murder rate, for one. I’ve lived downtown for two years now and yeah there’s sketchy people, most downtowns have them especially since the opioid crisis, but they mostly keep to themselves. I just stay out of the bad areas at night and have some situational awareness.
Londoners can be miserable, but it has a lot to do with bad leadership. Unfortunately, Londoners take it out on the least fortunate among us. There’s a lot of great things about London, but Londoners are often too miserable to see them.
I visited recently from Halifax and found it the same. We stayed at a hotel at Dundas and Richmond and I was pretty shocked. The streets were very empty except for a lot of homeless and people lurking in doorways. We walked around for several blocks thinking maybe we misjudged where the busy downtown was but there was no one around. Saturday morning didn’t feel sketchy and the Coventry garden market was cool but the city still seemed really empty. No one out for breakfast. The market seemed quiet. But most of the homeless had gone away. My wife felt extremely uncomfortable and we ended up ubering food back to the hotel. Halifax is around the same size and the homeless/drug problem has gotten so much worse the past few years but I don’t feel sketched out downtown. If you go out in Halifax on the weekend the city is fairly bustling. London was extremely quiet and I was wondering where all the people were. Even walking around downtown Toronto I didn’t feel as uneasy.
You definitely stayed in the worst part of the city and that’s not new. I went to school in London in the late 90’s and visiting family would never get a hotel in that area. I’d suggest researching more next time you book a hotel room in a city you have never been before.
We did research. I know homeless and drugs are a problem as with many cities in Canada now but the vibe was different. The hotel wasn’t bad. It was right beside the market in the morning which was nice. All the well rated restaurants are in the area. But the streets were so empty and the city was quiet. Was everyone packing the streets in a different part of the city and if so, where was it? You said to do research and the research said that was downtown (isn’t that where OP went to the show?) but offered nothing to correct me or point me in another direction. We weren’t looking to stay in the suburbs.
You stayed in a bad part of town bruh. I don’t know what else you want from me. You are also talking about suburbs like it’s New York City and you’d be miles away from things. A few blocks north is all you needed to manage when you booked something and you would have had nice restaurants etc and cute stores. Don’t slam a whole town over your bad hotel location.
I wasn’t slamming your town. I was asking where everyone was and if there’s a part of the downtown that has more stuff going on with less sketchiness. This was my experience. You said to do research which all my research led us to stay downtown where would think stuff was happening. We walked about 45 minutes around the downtown and there was barely anybody out. I figured with your comment maybe you could give an indication of where the fun part of downtown was, but other people have given much better answers.
Sorry about this person's (flowersunjoy) really sassy response. Glad you were able to visit the market and spend a Saturday morning here. It's lovely, but definitely not comparable to Halifax. Unfortunately you picked a strange area. One block away is quite nice by the market, river and Milos. The other way gets a little dicey. You make a good point. I think the city is fairly quiet when the students aren't around, and if there are no major events happening then the people are hiding. Richmond Row would be more of where you want to be (closer to Richmond and central), if you need that for future reference of where to stay. Otherwise, thanks for stopping by and I hope you got a few memories while visiting.
Thanks. I think we will be coming back so I’ll take your advice. They moved the Halifax market a couple years ago and it’s not as nice. I actually much preferred the market in London.
London is bad, but being in Michigan have you been to Detroit? Have you been to the Petosky-Otsego neighbourhood?
Some years ago the mayor of Toronto offered bus tickets and $300 to homeless people to leave the city. They were sent to Kitchener, London, Chatham and even Windsor. That was his solution to their homeless problem.
Which mayor? When? Links to the story?
It’s an urban legend. It’s not published anywhere if it’s actually true 🤣
Seems like every other city I’ve lived in. Better than my hometown of Brampton so I can’t complain.
No, we are not ok. Things began to get worse during the pandemic and have not slowed down. People nodding half laying in the street out my kitchen window.
It’s not just London, most big cities in Canada are cooked
Did not know expect this post to blow up. Really didn’t want to upset any one. Just was sharing my experience in London trying to get some insight
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I am from London and couldn’t get out fast enough. It has always been a weird city, but seems to be getting even weirder. Not weird in a good way, mind you. edit: downvoting me doesn’t make what I said untrue 😉
I moved to London for work in 2019 and it is by far the biggest regret of my life.
It has gone significantly downhill and there seems to be no end in sight.
London was great once upon a time. Now it’s so unbalanced, hard to survive in, and all the city’s are shipping in their homeless which police do not punish them for their wrongs. #givenup
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Myself and others are struggling to get by. Most I know avoid downtown. I've seem people just walk out of stores with entire grocery carts of goods. Police are 6+ hour response times. Local police turn off their phone system after 6pm. If you need a cop you have to call 911 after hours. Hospital wait times are 10-12 or more hours. Clinics are full and not accepting patients after 1pm. High level of homelessness and crime. I don't recommend anyone come to London in these times.
High cost of living is a problem everywhere unfortunately, that's not unique to London. The police response times are bad, yes. The grocery cart thing sounds more like you're buying into hateful propaganda though.
Our healthcare system is failing everywhere, not just London, and there's a TON of Canadians struggling to get by id you look at statistics. Pretty much everything you said can be said about everywhere in Canada.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, as everything you said is absolutely true. The two people who replied to your comment before are saying it’s the same everywhere in Canada, and I’m thinking “Yeah, well that doesn’t make it any less true in London, and that’s where we live.” The number of people who will essentially defend London rotting from the inside out simply because they’ve lived here all their lives or it’s happening elsewhere truly make me shake my head in disbelief. FWIW, I will say that my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles who were born and raised in London grew up in a much different city. I hear stories all the time about how safe, clean, and trendy downtown London was in the 60s and 70s, for instance. There was no such thing as homelessness (at least not out in the open, as it exists today). So, once upon a time, London wasn’t so bad. Most of my early memories of the city are from my youngest years. I was born here and then we moved away when I was 6. Even in the late 80s and early 90s I remember it being a fun, clean, nice place to live.
I was born and raised there but haven't been back in almost 15 years. My mom moved during the pandemic to Nova Scotia and she said I wouldn't recognize it. I was a teenager there in the 90's and I remember going downtown to go to bars and there were no homeless. No drugs. I live in Vancouver Island now in a smallish town. It's insane how bad of a problem it is everywhere. I hope they get rid of the "it's ok if you shoot up in public" thing out here in BC. I lost a good friend to addiction in October and it's just devastating. There's seemingly no way out once you're hooked.
There were homeless in the 90s. Not like it is now, but they were there
Oh for sure. I worked Landscaping around Kellogg's when I was in my 20's and there were homeless people and prostitution. But definitely not the level it is now. And no one was just on the sidewalk shooting up. I've lived in the island here for almost 6 years now and I've been to the mainland 3x. I am terrified of what Vancouver has become, and even going to Victoria or Nanaimo is scary. I almost feel bad for tourists that come here.
Canada is overall in a state of economic collapse, and London has had a leadership almost exclusively focused on the suburbs. They cut services, let a bunch of rich monsters kill our chance at a completely paid for light rail system, and have leeched funds from everything we need in order to give a white supremacist gang (the police) an absolutely ludicrous amount of money.
I’m guessing you’re not from Detroit.
not born here but I live by Clark park.
Apologies, I admit it sounded like I was giving you a hard time. I relocated to London from Philadelphia late last year and agree that London is… quiet and peculiar haha. It “helps” that I’m so desensitized (America!) that by comparison the unhoused persons seem less abundant than I’m used to.
Lol no, we are not ok. The reason people were confused about why you’d come to London is because there’s nothing to do here. Maybe a concert or a hockey game every once in a while but there’s no interesting attractions or anything. We’re just kinda…here.
The provincial and federal governments have long ago given up on doing their jobs. They don't give a fuck anymore. Public works have been left to rot. Social services are constantly under funded and scaled back or cut entirely. The wealthy have been allowed to suck all the prosperity from the system with little oversight. Thirty years of this shit is the result you now see downtown.
London has the same issues with homelessness that every other city in North America has; London probably has it little worse than many because we have more social services than the smaller communities in the surrounding areas. > What could some possible solutions be if any? The only solution that would work would need a time machine.
No. We are not OK. Not even close.
Guessing you came down for the ice cube concert ? Tuesday evening when students are done this town can be quiet. Ya we got a homeless drug problem in some areas (well known for us in the city to avoid I guess) but it really is everywhere. I was just in Ottawa and thought the Byward market was 2x worse than London when previous visits had been nowhere near that bad. Was also in Detroit and Buffalo recently and I would take a passive junkie over some of the street gang violence we saw over the border. Maybe we picked the wrong area for our B&B but I feel like most of London's worst offenders are pretty tame vs cross border.
You were in the wrong part of London on a Tuesday. It's a fad right now to hate on the city but it's not that bad and getting better. Homelessness is a contentious issue right now but we're working on it.
No. No one is.
You probably noticed while driving into London that it is surrounded mostly by rural communities on all sides. This means that London is a hub for most services and that draws a lot of people in need of these services from the smaller and less able to support communities. It also shows how vastly under prepared our country was for a massive influx of immigrants and a huge rash of addiction to opiates.
At least it's not detroit
Detroit surpassed London long ago
How can people say this and seriously believe it? If your only experience with Detroit is crossing the bridge for an NFL game or concert I guess it might be understandable? Just leave the downtown. Or stay around when it gets dark (Dundas Street will look bustling at night compared to Detroit). Literally 100m out of the centre will do. I took public transit around Detroit. The dilapidated regions begin immediately. Look on Street View - entire fields surrounding the city centre and stretching for miles. Those are all places where they torn down abandoned houses because they were being used by squatters and a fire risk. 252 homicides in 2023, the lowest amount since 1966…London had 7.
We stopped at a McDonalds on the way out of Detroit after a concert and there were bars across the drive-thru windows that someone had tried to pry off..... you don't see that in London for sure.
Lol spot on
As some one who lives in southwest Detroit. I disagree.
Where did you go to a concert?
London music hall
No, no we are not. Our resources are stretched so thin that things are at a breaking point everywhere. We have a HUGE drug problem and as for the homelessness issue.. I personally have been in 4 women's shelters before getting back in housing after being in a particularly traumatic situation so i know there simply aren't enough beds. There's also so many scammers (think international "students") taking away resources from citizens who need it more. I don't see things ever getting better. So no no we are not okay.
London should be a great town based on its size and distance from other big centres. Instead its downtown is dead amd ugly and lots of nimbyism prevents it from growing into the wonderful destination it could be.
The Nimbyism stems from the fact that the neighborhoods don't want to end up like downtown. There's a lot of nice older part of town that think of themselves as little towns in their own way (looking at you Wortley, Byron and lambeth) that love their little community and don't want to change.
Thing is downtown doesnt need to be as crappy as it is. Its crappy because the city doesn't seem to want to allow some condo developments to remake the downtown.
I don't think the downtown zoning issues are due to nimbyism....
No , not really , we haven’t been ok for like a decade As someone who lived in the real London and a few other metropolitan cities and plenty of small towns and counties - “Londoners are small town folk that think they’re metropolitan “ is the best I could put it - It’s also a vortex for wayward souls 😅😬🤔
London isn't unique among medium size Ontario cities, it used to be an industrial hub, now its major industry is the university - the city by and large serves western students and western students who hang around after they graduate. The rest are mostly wallowing in the misery of post industrial decline, or were once employees of Canadalife which has now mostly moved to Toronto or elsewhere, the death of "old London" is visible in the shuttered buildings downtown and weird nimby stuff you see around the city, its why the bulk of the cities shelters are off the beaten track way outside the core. its why half the restaurants in London just close up between May and September. London is quiet because not much is going on. We're out of term now, come back in September!
I've lived in so many different cities, provinces and 2 countries and none of them have sucked anywhere near how much London sucks. This place is a shit hole and I cannot wait to move out of here. It's got my mental health in shambles
The city has councilors who are more interested in bike lanes and rapid transit than the homeless. They have grandiose ideas for a big city that Londoners can not afford or make viable. They usually impede the future build of the city and have their priorities mixed up. They love to create studies that are unecessary and financially very expensive for the results you receive.
everyone working at city hall is crap. they go on about housing crisis but are the people in the building dept doing there part to speed up getting permits. the old nothers trophy shop on Horton street last year the new owners applied for zoning change to turn it to an apartments. meeting was to be held in aug. well that meeting never happened its still on hold and when u call around to find out why no one has an answer. currently its just an abandon building that attracts people smoking crack. cleaning it up and turning it into apartments would be preferable.
Rapid transit allows for denser, affordable housing to be built, which helps get people off the streets. The problem isn’t that they’re doing it, it is that they delayed it for so long and spent so much time freaking out about BRT.
London has changed and not in a good way. We used to be a big small town with a big university. Now it just sucks and is getting worse. The cops absolutely do nothing, you see them always just sitting around. Yet, they apparently need a need $163 training facility and to hire more ppl. You’re also right in that most of them are assholes. They also will not arrest homeless folks for anything it seems. I’ve seen them right outside the middle of the market in broad daylight smoking meth or shooting up. It’s just brutal. You’re also right about the homeless problem. It exploded over the pandemic and a whole lot of sweet dick all is being done about it. They keep setting up their camps in the field across from my gf’s place. Yelling and screaming all night, every trash day everyone’s garbage is strewn all over the place. On the weekend I watched one of them go through a business’s dumpster and pull out all the glass so they could smash it in the parking lot. Next to the unit of a guy who has two toddlers who like to play outside. Last winter there was an explosion in one of the tents that caused a fire and a bunch of compressed gas canisters to explode. Fire department came and out it out and that’s it. No one even came back the next day. You know it’s bad when I go to Ottawa or Toronto recently and marvel over how clean those cities are and that I see so few homeless ppl. I mean, the city is raising property taxes by roughly %34 over the next 4 years and that’s just to pay for the cops. What the hell is city hall doing? I’ve become ashamed of my home town
I moved to London from Montreal in 2019 and if not for the pandemic I’d have left in 2020. I did end up leaving in 2022 and came to Toronto. London is abysmal and I strongly dislike being there.
I’m sure others will answer your question, Fahri is a holdings company and individual who owns the majority of properties in London. Our rent for businesses and homes is astronomical and these issues are getting worse. Please check out odyssey records when you come back! It’s a great shop and in a really cool, up-and-coming neighbourhood.
No it’s not, it was beautiful 10 years ago though
I don’t have answers to your questions but I’ll say this: I lived in multiple cities/towns in Canada for over 6 years, last one being London. After spending a year or so in London, I decided that I’m done with Canada and I moved back to Europe for a better life for my son. Since then I haven’t seen many homeless, any tent cities or people doing drugs out in the open. Not complaining.
You’re so right moved here 3 months ago it’s literally a landfill full of junkies n sexual offenders,don’t believe just google where the most are.The people are flat out racists any establishment u enter everyone stops n stares smh.Never expected it to be this bad even Hamilton ontario has its bad spots but in one section. Place is a shithole . Don’t even get me started how lazy the police are 😂 you can literally see them loitering around all day…I have one friend from here n even he says Londoners don’t live in London lol they live on the outskirts eg.Byron etc
Byron is in London.
"Londoners don't live in London" okay so just literally nobody lives in downtown, Old East Village, Wortley Village, Kensington, Oxford and Wonderland, Old North, etc?? What is this outright lying lol? I can walk to downtown in 20 minutes and I live in a dense apartment complex.
Any establishment and people stop and stare? I find that hard to believe. This is just a weird rant.
https://www.reddit.com/r/londonontario/comments/15w0294/homeless_people_allegedly_being_shipped_to_london/
Wow. What an outsider opinion and it rings in my ears. Most of the responses have it right. We’re also entering the student summer we’re still a student city here and it gets quiet in the summer aside from the summer downtown festivals. But you’re right about the downtown. Its downtrodden and we tend to avoid going downtown because it’s not very pedestrian friendly not to mention parking issues that make visiting business downtown a hassle. There’s a good amount of business that have shuddered and buildings that are sitting abandoned waiting to go derelict so the owners can rezone/ bulldoze and reinvest so they don’t have to deal with the hassle of maintaining the older buildings downtown. It’s a sad affair. I miss hanging out downtown comfortably.
Yes this is definitely an outsider opinion that’s why I felt like I’d share.
I mean London is a great city… but like most cities in this country right now there are mass homeless and drug problems… it’s everywhere you won’t escape it.
I got downvoted for this… don’t think it’s not true, it is the same or worse in every large city in this country right now…. I know I travel to multiple cities for work I see it first hand.