Matan Hazanov, a Toronto resident, says the city has declined sharply since COVID, with soaring grocery and rent costs, rising crime, and homeless encampments spreading into suburbs. He questions why public spending keeps rising while quality of life falls.
I've lived in Toronto my whole life, talking about over, well over 30 years now, and I've noticed over the last few years, really since, you know, the COVID restriction era, everything not just became unaffordable, which Toronto has always been a bit on the pricier side of living, but it became exceedingly unaffordable in terms of groceries, in terms of rent, in terms of being able to purchase a home. Just everything seems to have been degraded. Crime is up, homelessness has skyrocketed. I remember like a few, just a few years ago, you'd always see homeless people here and there, but But now there's entire homeless encampments. People, like even in the suburbs where I live, it's like there's homeless people all over the place. So we seem to be spending more, not only in terms of public spending, but we're getting less as a society and it's much more difficult to live. So, you know, you've been in municipal politics for quite a while. Why do you think this has happened?
These are very broad questions, but let me deal with the homelessness, for example.
