[LINK] "Danforth's decline: Drugs, prostitutes now in the open"

[rfmcdonald]

Is this more Toronto Star doom'n'gloom, this time about the Danforth Avenue that's the axis of Toronto east of the Don River and here written by Robyn Doolittle, I wonder, or is it actually accurate?

A trip to the Danforth for many means niche boutique shopping in Greektown, a wine list at lunch and a Starbucks for the ride home. Three subway stops east, at Coxwell, the streetscape has changed.

Trendy eateries are replaced with fast-food restaurants. Parking lots and sterile storefronts hopscotch one another down the Danforth drag. And the further you go, the more it slides.

The kitsch of Greektown dries up at Jones Ave. Pass Donlands. An auto shop. A fried chicken joint. A funeral parlour. Coxwell is the dividing line.

By Main Street, bars on shop windows, payday loan stores and dingy pubs are the norm. Drifters who have been turned away from the local shelter sleep in long alleyways. Dealers work out of side-street crack houses. Prostitutes walk the Victoria Park strip.

It's only getting worse. In the last three years, the drugs and street workers moved into the open. Deals that used to go down in the back of grimy Internet cafes now happen in broad daylight. Prostitutes moved out of rub-and-tugs and onto street corners.

Now, the crime has seeped west.

Last week, a known gang member was fatally shot in the face on a residential street just west of Pape, in the heart of gentrified Greektown. Police are still trying to determine what 27-year-old Theo Tiku was doing in the quiet family neighbourhood. It may have been a blip, but it was enough to send shock waves through the community.