What does DTK need?

[ac3r]

"doubled"...I mean, I'm not going to look up the numbers to see if that's true because it doesn't matter. Our society is incredibly safe. If the rate doubled, it's still low. You are needing to see changes that are orders of magnitude to meaningfully change the safety in our society. It certainly does not mean things have "gone to shit".

And we absolutely have not had an "explosion" of targeted murders. You are spreading the kind of FUD that gets FOX News hosts their fucking jollies.

Stop drawing parallels between "seeing an addict" (which is not a crime or suffering in anyway beyond the pain of seeing another human suffering) and nuisance crimes like vehicle theft and extremely violent and dangerous crimes like assault and murder. These are three wildly different things, and equating them does not help anyone but realestate developers who want to pave our greenbelt.

But the worst thing you've referring to homeless people as an "infestation", that is an evil, dehumanizing thing to say.

This comment is not the sort of environment I want to experience thank you very much.

Well the statistics are all there if you do want to actually see that crime, drug use, deaths and homelessness have in fact gone up. It doesn't matter what words you want to use to describe it, the proof is available to you.

Yes our society is incredibly safe, but at the same time it is becoming less safe than it has been previously. Why deny this? It seems like your response to this is very emotional, rather than approaching this objectively for what it is.

I'm by no means attempting to dehumanize people who suffer from homelessness, drug use or mental illness. I've personally struggled with addiction and mental illnesses for my entire life, using everything from fentanyl to obscure "designer" drugs you've certainly never heard of. I've been diagnosed with everything from borderline personality disorder to psychotic depression over the years. For that reason, I am comfortable calling things out for what they are because my own personal experiences allow me to fully understand things like what trauma can do to a person, what poor coping mechanisms result in, what desperation for drugs or money can force people to do etc. I have no reason to sugar coat things and believe me, the people on the streets talk this way too. Luckily these issues never fully consumed me and despite falling into an abyss many times I nonetheless managed to create a life where I've been able to live all over the planet, hold the highest academic degree one can achieve by completing a doctorate, achieve major contributions to society and so much more. This isn't meant to be "bragging", just acknowledgement that one can suffer from these sort of hurdles and overcome them. While not all these people may be able to or wish to aim so high, many are capable of great things themselves if they had the personal will power and help.

My point, really, is that these issues are becoming a huge problem that is evidently continuing to grow and grow and grow with very little help from anyone to change this. When anti-social, destructive, criminal behaviour is allowed to flourish it drags not just those directly suffering from it down but also everyday people like all of us here. All an addict needs to do to impact others is leave a dirty needle around and poke someone, possibly infecting them with HIV. Or maybe they squat a building and burn it down killing people. Or they steal from businesses and ruin someone's hard work. Or they die and their family has a piece of themselves ripped out of their heart forever. It's fucked up and shouldn't be tolerated, but we as a society need to find a solution and be honest about what is going on.

If this sort of stuff is not what you want to experience, then good, I guess. Leave it to people like the actual addicts, the homeless, NGOs and non-profits, medical professionals, social workers, politicians and urban planners and architects like myself who actually have lived experience and knowledge of this stuff to work together to solve these problems. These problems hurt cities - drastically. Remember NYC in the 80s? Detroit in the 70s? All of California right now? Those cities were completely destroyed in many regards due to things like crime, drugs, homelessness and awful economics. I don't want to see that happen to Waterloo Region because we've been there before and are finally rebuilding things again. But as these issues worsen, we need to be honest about them and find solutions so we help not only business owners and people living in the region, but also the transients and addicts who are dying by the dozens each year from drugs, cold, malnutrition etc.

Sure my way of talking about these things is blunt, I guess, but I'm far too old and lived to worry about being woke and politically correct.