the discrimination in housing in ontario is not something i'm the first person to draw attention to. the appropriate boards have drawn attention to it - and argued it's too big of a problem for them to police.

it's the kind of thing that needs an education campaign.

you see it in every ad.

STUDENTS ONLY.
FEMALES ONLY.
BOYS ONLY.
INDIANS ONLY. and, they'll even specify -
GUJARATI ONLY, HINDI ONLY, PAKISTANI ONLY.
SENIORS ONLY.
WORKERS ONLY.

and, those are only the ads i can see - in english, and for public view.

the big thing right now is students. and, it's about to flip. a few more days.

and, they're starting to do things like mark their ads with URGENT.

yeah, well, maybe you should stop discriminating against your prospective tenants, if you want to fill the vacancy urgently?

this is an emergency. there's people lined up to live here. but, they're all white people with jobs. somebody find me a 19 year-old female, muslim pakistani student immediately! i thought canada was a free market?

ugh.

but, what's increasingly concerning to me is that there's no bohemian escape in this town. there's no art district. there's nobody that gets a call from a composer/activist on the dole and says "you sound interesting. the neighbours will like you.".

for a supposedly left-leaning town, the people here seem to be remarkably conservative.

there's no time for the disabled, no time for queers and no time for artists.

again: it's increasingly clear that i don't want to live here, that the culture is dead here and it's time to get out.

there's no hipsters. no art village. no gay district. no culture....

it's just korans & capitalism, everywhere you turn.

we can fix this, though.

what i want to see is an ad for a non-smoking apartment with these wonderful words in the body:

ARTISTS ONLY.