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NikoS said:
Personal experience... I think that feeling safe in an area would really come down to what experiences someone had in an area.
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I agree, but I also think people tend to hold judgments against areas of the city for a long time. We're lucky enough to live in a city with a downtown that is rapidly evolving - it's worth spending the time to revisit once-sketchy places and see how they're evolving.
 
I'm coming to Toronto this Friday and I want to check out a building near Dundas East and Seaton. Opinions on that neighbourhood please.

DISCLAIMER: I live directly across the river from Winnipeg's North End.
 
Seaton Street is a very pretty street with gorgeous old homes on it. Neighbourhood can be a bit rough-around-the-edges. Some of the apartment buildings around there have pretty bad reputations. There's a new FreshCo grocery store right nearby.
 
I'm a nearby resident. The area is probably the last holdout to rampant gentrification downtown.
The surrounding streets to the east, south and west have a lot of poor residents, shelters and public housing projects.
It is gradually improving, but much more slowly than the rest of downtown. The main instigator for change is in the Regent Park neighbourhood to the east. It is several square blocks of public housing in the process of a total demolition and rebuild, including privately owned condominiums. It is abput 25% complete so far. This is where the new FreshCo grocery store mentioned above is.

On the other hand, Seaton and the streets immediately to the east have some of the best old Victorian housing stock outside of Cabbagetown. Some of these have been purchased, restored and renovated into modern and pricey homes.

It's a very quirky area. Are you male or female? I'm a guy and feel safe walking here, but I was raised a city kid. I don't think I would feel comfortable walking here at night in the dark if I were a woman, especially if I were not familiar with the area. (I don't know anything about Winnipeg so I don't understand what your disclaimer means.)
 
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Riverman said:
Thank you Matt. Do you feel that area is on the way up or down?
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I'd say up, though a bit too slowly. I lived on Seaton for almost three years and got very comfortable walking around.

The big barriers are the Moss Park towers, which need to be redeveloped, and the Maxwell Meighen shelter at Queen & Sherbourne. I've got nothing against homeless shelters, but the Meighen is poorly designed and essentially results in an entire stretch of street looking sketchy.

If I could get a deal on one of the awesome houses on Seaton, I'd move back there.
 
Jonny5 said:
Are you male or female? I'm a guy and feel safe walking here, but I was raised a city kid. I don't think I would feel comfortable walking here at night in the dark if I were a woman, especially if I were not familiar with the area. (I don't know anything about Winnipeg so I don't understand what your disclaimer means.)
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I'm a 53 year old male, 6'2" wife is same age but much smaller. The reason I mentioned the North End is that is a 100 square block area where almost no one works and it is probably one of the worst neighbourhoods in Canada. It is right across the river from our nice, little area. So, "a little sketchy" doesn't bother me much! My son's girlfriend spent last summer living in the area near Sherbourne and Isabella and she felt safe even coming home late at night.
 
Assuming they aren't pulled from his ass, they may be compiled from here:

http://http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/majors.php

There are actually very few places that one can obtain full, detailed crime statistics in Toronto, much less Canada. There are a few third-party consulting groups out there who pay court officers for arrest records, but these are unofficial data not found in Statscan or other official sources.
 
dt_toronto_geek said:
This would be a handy reference if only it were somewhat close to being accurate, it's definitely not. Any idea of where these stats. are sourced from?
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Click on an incident. Click "view details". Click "view source". It takes you to the official Toronto Police Service news report.
 
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'Dangerous' in Toronto is all relative.

Check out North and West Philly, Camden NJ, Burbs of DC, Baltimore.

Seaton is shady because it's surrounded by public housing, low rent towers, halfway homes, safe injection sites, rooming homes, and all the other good stuff that every progressive urbantoronto poster loves and relishes in ;)

That being said, it's safe. Don't buy into the 'fear'.

Disclosure: I grew up in the city, so I might be more accustomed to the sights and sounds lol
 
CDL.TO said:
Click on an incident. Click "view details". Click "view source". It takes you to the official Toronto Police Service news report.
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I should have been clear. I look at my neighbourhood since September 2010 and I know that this is less than a sampling of crime statistics, it is by no means close to complete.
 
I've lived in the downtown east neighbourhood for years and never felt unsafe. Sure we've had some shootings, but that's just the drug dealing gangstas from Regent Park taking each other out. As long as we don't have another Jane Creba I'd say the average homeowner in my area doesn't give these activities a second thought.
 
I checked out the area on Friday morning and didn't seem to bad to me. I walked down Seaton and Ontario and saw some scruffy dudes but nothing scary at all. Some very nice homes on those streets.

Unfortunately the building I was interested in was in much worse condition than I thought
 
I don't find any part of downtown too dangerous, maybe the Regent Park area somewhat. I find that the fact that downtown is more busy all the time its not as bad as more isolated areas in Scarborough, Rexdale, Jane & Finch and parts of Weston Rd etc. I would much rather stroll the streets of downtown at night than any of these. I do believe that Toronto is a very safe city for its size and is not plagued by the problems most U.S. cities have, where most of the city is a ghetto and the others have to live in gated communities, here we have more of a balance.
 
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