With the top down in her burgundy convertible, realtor Kristyn Wong-Tam was enjoying a sunny summer day as she cruised east along Queen St. towards an office supply store.

When the light turned red at Sherbourne St., Wong-Tam was daydreaming about legal folders and labels.

Suddenly, someone was screaming. A young woman with leathery skin and matted blonde hair sprinted into traffic, then hurled her petite frame into Wong-Tam’s passenger seat.

“Drive! Drive!” the woman shrieked hysterically, diving into Wong-Tam’s lap. “They’re going to kill me!”

“But it’s a red light, there’s a car in front of me,” Wong-Tam stammered.

Within seconds, two men appeared on opposite sides of the Mercedes, madly swinging their fists towards the woman. Wong-Tam was receiving the majority of the blows.

The light changed. She hit the gas. In pain and trembling with fright, Wong-Tam pulled over a block later to call the police. The woman ran away.

Two years later, Wong-Tam is the neighbourhood’s city councillor. She has never publicly spoken about the attack, but mentions it reluctantly during an interview as proof of her personal commitment to turn the area around.

It won’t be easy.

Year after year, the downtown eastside consistently tops every major Toronto police crime indictor list. Simply put, this is the area in Toronto where, statistically, you are most likely to be shot, stabbed, robbed or sexually assaulted.

And while other problem areas of the city — think Cabbagetown, Leslieville, Parkdale, Regent Park — are cleaned up and gentrified, Dundas and Sherbourne has been left waiting for its turn.

That time is now, says Wong-Tam.

As builders snap up cheap plots of land, new luxury condos hit the market, and city hall plugs away at plans to overhaul its shelter system, Wong-Tam is working to bring together isolated community members.

This perfect storm of political will and private development money has city officials, urban planners and real estate investors predicting a renaissance on the Dundas corridor.

“I would guess that, 10 years from now, you won’t be able to recognize that area,” said Ernie Lightman, an economist at the University of Toronto. “To be honest, I’m surprised it has taken this long.”

Wong-Tam is coming to check up on a Toronto Community Housing building she visited during the campaign.

“I was at the front door and a resident stopped me: ‘You don’t want to go in there,’ they said. It looked like it had never been cleaned — ever.”

Wong-Tam inherited a neighbourhood in trouble.

The reasons are obvious. The solutions less so.

According to statistics compiled by Toronto police between 2005 and 2009, which the Star obtained through a freedom of information request, the Sherbourne and Dundas neighbourhood ranks first in every major crime indicator list.

The area handily beat out neighbourhoods traditionally regarded as troubled, such as Jane and Finch, Rogers and Keele, and Weston and Lawrence — areas where community-based policing and social investment have coincided with decreasing crime rates.

This has not been the case on the downtown eastside.

Bordered by Carlton St. to the north, Parliament St. to the east, Queen St. to the south and Jarvis St. to the west — an area less than one square kilometre in size — this tiny quadrant of the city harbours three of the city’s largest homeless shelters, 32 legal rooming houses and 14 suspected illegal ones, more than a dozen abandoned lots and buildings, and one of the largest clusters of social housing in the city.

This high concentration of poverty lures predators from other regions.

“It’s hard to say the exact numbers, but I bet at least half of the dealers live in other parts of the city or not in Toronto at all. They come here because they know there’s a market,” said Sgt. Mike Ferry, who frequently patrols the area with the TAVIS rapid response team.

And in that same area there are few community-building amenities. No grocery stores. No banks. And no friendly neighbourhood pubs, unless you count the Filmore’s strip-club/hotel at the foot of George St.

Rounding out the neighbourhood are rows upon rows of expensive Victorian homes, which have been fortified with 2-metre-high wrought-iron fences.

“It’s probably one of the worst-planned areas in the city,” said Wong-Tam.

And fixing that problem is no simple task.

For her part, the councillor has helped resuscitate a Business Improvement Area on Queen St. Wong-Tam, who owns a contemporary gallery on Queen West, has been looking at ways to entice artists and their families to move into the community. She’s in talks with Artscape about building affordable homes and workspaces. And in early May, she’ll be speaking with local young mothers about getting some proper playground equipment for Allan Gardens.

“I’ve also been meeting with developers — ‘What do you need? Help me do this. How can we work together?’” she said.

If it’s true that a healthy neighbourhood is a mixed-income one, the Dundas corridor needs more affluent residents. Money brings local businesses, which in turn get people walking and shopping on the streets. The more eyes on the street, the safer the neighbourhood becomes.

But it’s a chicken-and-egg problem, says Lightman, an economist with the University of Toronto faculty of social work. People with means typically avoid areas with high crime rates. The neighbourhood needs urban pioneers to move in, plant roots and start the cycle.

“The thing that Dundas and Sherbourne has going for it is that it’s so close to everything,” he said. “The property is too valuable. You’re already seeing it. The development is closing in.”

It wouldn’t be the first venture in the area. Some small-scale development had already taken place to the immediate south, but the Glasshouse Lofts was the first major project in the embattled region.

The 88-unit contemporarily designed condo building would be just one block away from where Wong-Tam was assaulted at Queen and Sherbourne Sts.

In 2008, the owner of that corner’s notorious Coffee Time was arrested for selling marijuana and crack to customers. Across the street from the doughnut shop, now a fast-food chicken joint, is Moss Park Arena, where the city’s homeless congregate, and one of Toronto’s largest shelters, the Maxwell Meighen Center.

“It was a tough site. There were literally crackheads shuffling in front of the sales office,” said Lamb. “Before I came on, the project had failed at least three times. The developer called me and I said, ‘I can make this work.’”

Lamb’s advice: Build with the buyer in mind. What types of people would overlook some neighbourhood grit to be close to the core? Young professionals. Arsty types. Investors. And what did those people want? Good-sized apartments with modern finishes and a very good price. Don’t bother with 1,000-square-foot units, because that buyer can’t afford them.

It worked. Glasshouse opened a little over a year ago.

Gavin Morris, a 35-year-old who works in financial technology, moved in this month.

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“It was perfect. It’s so close to work — the financial district — the St. Lawrence Market, my favourite pub, shops. Basically, I now have my whole life in just a few blocks,” he said.

And what about the less-desirable aspects of the neighbourhood? The panhandlers? The drug dealers?

“I don’t really think about them. I don’t even really notice them,” he said.

Now The Modern condo is picking up where Glasshouse left off. People will be moving in this fall.

And it’s not the only one. At Shuter and Jarvis Sts., Oxygen is slated to be finished for 2013, and nearby Pace Condos, at Jarvis and Dundas Sts., will be finished in 2015.

With each new development comes thousands of dollars for the city in lucrative Section 37 fees. Builders can negotiate larger density and height permits in exchange for making investments in the community, such as a community pool or green space.

“There have not been many large-scale developments in the area, so there isn’t a large pool of Section 37 funds,” said Wong-Tam. “This is what I am hoping to change.”

But just the presence of those condos will change things, Lamb believes.

“The Modern literally touches that old crack doughnut shop,” he said. “There’s probably 300 condos in The Modern, with an average of 1.5 people living in each. Now 400 people are going to descend on the street — and you think they’re going to tolerate crackheads? They’re not.

“What’s going to happen is huge pressure is going to come to bear on that intersection. And the police and the city governors are going to have to do something about it.”

Lamb is so sure about this, he’s considering buying the lot across the street to develop himself.

Roger Keil, director of The City Institute at York University, is concerned about the heightened pressure this kind of investment means for an already vulnerable community.



The Dundas corridor is the last frontier for downtown development. To the east, the groundbreaking Regent Park revitalization has transformed a once-dangerous area into a vibrant, even chic, place to live. From the west, massive investments and expansion by Ryerson University have added stability and prestige to the downtown eastside.



From the north, butting up against once-dangerous St. James Town, three condo developments and a host of applications working their way through the system have flooded the streets with young couples and their dogs. Gentrification is closing in on all sides.

“The remarkable thing here is the scale and speed at which these things are happening,” said Keil. “This is not the small-scale gentrification that’s happening in other areas, encroaching step by step, block by block, abandoned building by abandoned building.”

But not everyone is convinced it will even happen.



Mitchell Kosny, director of urban planning at Ryerson University, argues the area condos tend to exist as little islands within the community.

“I think the development will help; it will create more of a fix, but they’re not really connected. People walk outside and get right on the streetcar or head to their parking garage,” he said.

Following the theory that new residents will push out the homeless population, the next question is: Well, then, where do they go?

Patricia Anderson, a spokesperson with the shelter, support and housing department at city hall, said there are no plans to remove any of the shelters, but there is a recognition that something needs to change.

“We want to return the emergency shelter program to its original function. In Toronto, what’s happened with some shelters is they’ve become de facto affordable housing. We’ll be shifting from managing homelessness to ending it. We’ve already started doing that now.”

The area is saturated, so no more shelter beds will be added — there are currently 1,012 in that small region — and there are plans to completely renovate several shelters, including the infamous Seaton House on George St.

While the Seaton project is still in its infancy, an October 2009 staff report suggests city officials are pushing for a mixed-income and mixed-use development. Retail, student lodgings, office space, permanent rental housing, as well as improved counseling and medical support services, are all on the table.

And Wong-Tam is going to make sure this isn’t just another city initiative that sits on the shelf collecting dust.

“Every time I see Phil Brown (general manager of the shelter, support and housing administration), I say: ‘We’ve got to do something spectacular with Seaton House,’” Wong-Tam said.

“Today I bumped into him in the café. He looked at me and said: ‘Don’t say it. I know. We’re going to do it,’” she said. “And that’s just the beginning.”