Quote:
Originally Posted by DoubleF
What sorta bugs me is that people can't seem to figure this part out. I agree there is no overall increase in crime in the city. Why everyone gets excited about this stat is beyond me because IMO it's completely useless.
However, people keep mixing this aspect with the increase of the crime in the surrounding community. Hastings and Main probably saw a negligible change in the overall demographic and crime shift before and after Insite. The communities directly around the SIS in Calgary went from a decently nice neighborhood close to the core to something equivalent perhaps to the demographic of the drop in centre soon after implementation. There was a far more obvious and jarring shift in crime and undesirable events in the surrounding communities immediately after the SIS opened. The surrounding communities tried to request CPS/Municipal/Provincial support to aid an incremental shift (or to deter concentration of the shift completely into the surrounding communities) but were ignored and left to deal with a skyrocketing shift in crime to the community on their own. Businesses have closed and many have immediately moved away as a direct result of the way the SIS was implemented.
It sucks that the surrounding community, which was open to accepting the SIS, was essentially required to bear a significantly heavier burden than the community was able to accept. On top of this, the community was required to receive this burden with ridicule and little support from those implementing the program. A dent in the quality of life was expected over the cratering of the quality of life in the community.
Metaphorically, it felt like someone with a home willing to offer their entire basement to help store things for the greater good of everyone. Instead, they ended up watching so much stuff aimlessly piled into the entire home that the end result resembled a hoarder's house. We're willing to help, but instead it feels like residents were considered a nuisance in establishing the greater good with the SIS a symbol of this treatment.
If the surrounding community is going to continue to be treated like a nuisance, then screw the rest of ya'll, get the SIS out of there. This would be unfortunate because it is a valuable resource to the city and the Chumir is a location that makes a ton of sense. I really don't think it's unreasonable for the community wanting to feel like an equal partner, rather than a beaten spouse in the relationship. The smallest of steps have been made towards appeasing the community, but no where close to what should have been done and what needs to be done to achieve this.
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This is the part that the naive ideologues have been missing entirely but addressing with the predictable:
Lol NIMBYs!! Who GAF?? They just dont care about the importance!!
I dont think the majority of people are ranting and raving about closing the facility or moving it or that it doesnt work so scrap it.
The problem is that you've now concentrated a troubled population.
"Oh! But crime isnt really increasing!"
Maybe. Maybe not. But its being focused and congregated in one spot, which people are genuinely, and rightly concerned about, because they kind of live in that spot.
But SISs are important so screw everything else!!
They are important. But the people living around them also have a right to live there safely.
They dont want to live in a war zone. That doesnt make them bad people, it just makes them 'people.'
But by all mean, continue with the eye-rolling, lolling and general contempt.
Because, well, its not in your back yard, its in theirs. So you dont have to care.