Why I Left Toronto After 11 Years

in about 3 days time I'll be finally moving out of this city of Toronto to Montreal and I could not be happier I am just ecstatic to finally be getting out of here I mean yeah I'm happy to go to Montreal but the main reason I'm so excited is because I'm finally leaving this horrible City and what's become of it because at one point this city was amazing it was so good to live here and now it's horrible and unlivable let me start by sitting the obvious how crazy expensive rent is right now in Toronto in 2023 it's absolutely ridiculously unaffordable on every level right now about $2600 $2,600 is what you got to pay if you want to live in a one-bedroom apartment here for a simple one-bedroom that doesn't even include utilities Hydro electric No Parking Spot no nothing and just to give you an idea of how expensive it's gotten in 2017 a few friends of mine I remember were renting a place about 45 minutes north of downtown Toronto a three-bedroom place they were renting it for 1,600 now in 2023 that same place that three-bedroom is 2849 and that's just one example of what it's like to be here it's horrible man it's it's getting to a point now it's so ridiculously unaffordable and you can't do anything at this point because more than 60 to 70% of your paycheck per month goes towards rents for a lot of people and it's the single biggest problem this city has that's why people in record numbers people in their mid to late 20s early 30s are still living at home with their parents and it's crazy because the places that are usually available for rent are in horrible condition not in any condition to live I'm talking there is mold along the walls leaking toilets leaking sinks door knobs that don't lock properly bugs of all kinds and guess what the landlords don't got to fix anything why because if you don't want to rent a place there is 30 other people in line to rent that exact place and that's the other issue with why rent is so expensive there's a lack of good housing here and a lack of the number of houses and I don't see it changing anytime soon it's just the way it is it's so unfortunate the next part of why I'm leaving this place is public Transit oh my God public transit is criminally bad here like absolutely criminally bad for a city that's as big as Toronto with over 9 million people living here right now we need absolutely much better public transit here for example Toronto subway system is almost the exact same as it was in 2002 there have been a few additions but for the most part it looks almost the exact same back when there was 4 million people living here now that number is more than doubled but the subway station hasn't seen anything major and unless you live in the heart of downtown Toronto or near a subway station this is very much a car city you're not going to be able to get to most places without a car and the politicians who run this city they're really trying hard to emulate New York that's their biggest role model is trying to be like New York City but it's not New York City and that brings me to my next point the traffic in this city is absolutely ridiculous you might be seeing the cars here next to me right now driving there's a bit of traffic here on the road but for the most part it is absolutely crazy how busy the roads have gotten since before Co and when Co was over all of a sudden everyone came back into the streets it was very clear there is not enough roads and don't even get me started on highways because Toronto has only one Highway that goes east to west and it's a 401 and little known fact the 401 is the busiest Highway in North America yeah busier than any Highway in California any Highway in New York by far the busiest one and you know why it's because we only have one of those highways here in California they got multiple of them New York they got multiple highways we got only one that goes east to west and if you look at a photo of the highway on Google Maps it's always completely red and congested and every torontonian who drives does their absolute best to never get on that highway yet it's always still crazy busy it's just the reality of it don't even get me started on the condition of the roads I'm talking potholes everywhere just NeverEnding divots it's just not good infrastructure to begin with I also don't know why they seem to love to give licenses to whoever applies for them here a lot of people don't know how to drive yeah if you're driving in the heart of downtown it is absolutely horrendously bad because of how congested traffic can get and that brings me to my next point is the NeverEnding construction that's going on in every corner of this city it never ends there's an ongoing joke between torontonians about a street called Eglington that's in Midtown Toronto and since I moved here in 2011 it's had construction on it 24/7 3 65 nonstop all the time year round there is construction going on and here's the funny part nothing actually gets built so you kind of wonder what are you guys building here and nothing is actually getting erected it's just kind of stupid but hey that's the way it is here and that's the reality for a lot of torontonians and you'll often drive by or walk by the construction sites and during the day you'll see nobody working there you know why it's because because the companies that are working there they're taking their time to get as much money from the government as possible and the government because they're so horribly mismanaged here they're not doing anything to change it anything to fix it so you have a lot of these construction sites popping up you know trying to they're saying they're going to build new buildings build New Roads build new whatever but nothing is getting done and to make matters worse they're closing off parts of the road for years sometimes years and it's absolutely atrocious that it's happening and we can't do anything to fix it so the one thing I can do is get the hell out of the city oh and it brings me to my next point which might be my favorite point of all so far it's the politics and the politicians of the city even based on politician standards the lies they tell us are absolutely bottom tier the amount of lying they say to get elected for example especially regarding Transit is mindblowing they've always been promising oh we're going to get better transit for the city we're going to lower housing prices every politician who comes in says the same things and none of it has been changing it's been getting worse pretty much by the day and something interesting about the mayors of Toronto so the two past mayors the one that left office maybe about a month ago he pulled a Bill Clinton yeah he cheated on his wife of 40 years with one of his staff sters and yeah so he decided to just leave his job because he did that the guy before him who was here he had a huge Scandal because he kept buying and he kept smoking it and we have something with Mayors here in this city for some reason they just all seem to be breaking the law so I'm curious to see who the next one's going to be they're inheriting an absolutely dying City and I'm just curious to see what they're going to do with it but I'm predicting it's not going to be anything good next point is there's a lack of purpose here 100% there is no purpose that most people walk around they go to work they go home they sleep next day they go to work they go home they sleep and because it's so expensive to live here there is a lot of people who don't have any hobbies or any real Hobbies outside of their work so they become fully-fledged Workaholics because that's all they can do right that doesn't even begin to include the commute time that people have to do to actually get to work there's a lot of people that very regularly commute more than 2 hours just to get to work and then 2 hours just to get back home and you can imagine what kind of impact I would have on the rest of your day you're probably not going to get anything else done that's not really any fault of your own it's just the reality of things and it's a very common thing for Toronto the next thing is this is a very soulless City and there's a very huge lack of empathy for anybody here it's very fast fastpaced it's kind of similar to New York in that style it's that it's a very fast-paced City people just don't care about you for the most part you're on your own for example if I was to literally fall over here curl up into a ball in pain people would walk right past me they wouldn't care and you [Music] know caught one in action as I was saying the reason I know that would happen is because you see it happen downtown on a day daily basis people are literally curled up into a ball on the side of the street so many of them and they get nothing they there is no help for them whatsoever and it's just the way it is there is no culture here in the city to bring people together either and that also kind of ties in with the city being so Multicultural it's a great thing don't get me wrong but for the most part you have all the diasporas keeping to themselves and doing their own thing every holiday gets celebrated here but there's very little overlap if you will like they don't really celebrate the holidays together and every Community usually keeps themselves like the Asians will keep themselves when it's Russian Easter and Russian Orthodox they will keep themselves in their own Community it's not like everyone comes together and celebrates it everyone keeps themselves in their own little Corners that's the reality and the culture of Toronto the next part is the weather yo the weather here is absolute dog absolute garbage on every level right now it's the end of April and I'm walking around with a jacket and a hat on cuz it's so cold it's probably like 45° here out right now you know the weather it'll be sunny one day next day it'll be freezing rain next day it'll be snowing next day it'll be cloudy it's just so unpredictable that's not anything to do with the government obviously but it's just not good weather here for the most part I mean it's Canada so for the for about 6 to 8 months out of the year it's very cold anyway and for the little amount of summertime you do get you got to cherish every minute of it now this next Point here might be a bit controversial but I stand behind it and that is the lack of free speech and the woke mentality that this city has just for some reason adopted like it's the main thing it's known for and yes we do have free speech laws in Canada which are great don't get me wrong those are great but in Toronto if you're not really supporting everybody else you're not going along with the woke mentality you're kind of pushed to the side this is actually one of the worst areas in the city it's okay though as I was saying there is a big woke mentality here and Canadians for the most part are very tolerant of everything that's not a bad thing that's a good thing but here it's very much US versus them mentality and I don't like that I don't like that it's like that it should be you can do whatever you want you can say whatever you want to say and you shouldn't be ousted for it but people forget often times that hey freedom of speech means you got to tolerate a lot of stuff next thing is man lately Public Safety has been becoming such a huge issue in this city and you hear news all the time in the subway people get attacked random unprovoked attacks a few months ago a woman was set on fire on the subway station just for waiting a few days ago some lady jumped in front of the tracks because she just wanted to end her own life and a few days ago again a 16-year-old kid was stabbed to death he was sitting on a bench by himself doing nothing minding his own business but these attacks are becoming more and more common place in this city and it's very worrying to see this happening because this is one of the safest big cities in the world for the most part safety here was never an issue before but now it is look at this giant liquor store you know so like during the pandemic this place was still open no problem cuz the government kept wanting to make money from it the next thing nightlife in this city for some reason I don't know why internationally Toronto nightlife is renowned it's very mediocre at best it's very mediocre there isn't anything really special about nightlife in Toronto like when I used to go out clubbing a lot back a few years ago me and my friends would often go to neighboring cities like St Catherine's or London or Montreal because the nightlife there is so much better than it is in Toronto and for some reason people think it's amazing when it's really not it's very very mediocre at best very very expensive first off super expensive and not even that good and of course you got to mention how bad the homelessness problem in this city is now you know Toronto shelters first of all there is very very few Toronto shelters there's only enough room for 9,000 people inside of them and there's more than 20,000 people here who are homeless and that number is growing every single day and it's really tough to see because all these people got to go somewhere they got to sleep somewhere they got to stay somewhere and they're not really building any new shelters for them so you see a lot more of them if you walk in downtown Toronto at night you're going to see a lot of homeless people just on the floor in Corners yesterday I was walking downtown Toronto I saw a guy literally walk sleeping in the middle of the street I mean he had a blanket a sleeping bag he was sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk all like right in the middle and people were just like walking right past him guy was fast asleep you're seeing more and more of that every single day now and it's very sad because they seem to not really be getting cared about whatsoever but again that's the reality of this place the second to last thing is the lack of connection between the neighboring cities and what I mean is for example you have downtown Toronto right next to it you have Miss Saga to the West you have Brampton to the Northwest you have Richmond Hill to the north Scaro to the east Ajax even a little more East to that these cities only have one bus route that connects them and unless you got a car again it's very hard to get back and forth from these cities and the buses first off they can take anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half to two hours to get you there if you don't have a car especially in those places you need a car like in Ajax or Miss Saga you have to have a car if you're taking public transit you're going to be adding at least 2 hours to your commute time and that's just kind of unacceptable in my in my eyes but hey people some people seem to like it for me I pass and the last thing I want to say it's the sad reality this is as good good as it's going to be it's not going to get any better unfortunately this is as good as it gets for now and it's going to only get worse from here because I mean prices for rent aren't going to magically go down tomorrow you know you're not going to have better roads coming up out of nowhere it's not going to fix itself and it's not going to get any better that's why I think in my in my opinion the best thing I can do is get the hell out of this place and I'm doing that I'm going to do that and hopefully say goodbye to all this chaos that's it I'll see you next time

Channel: Ali Koca

Views: 258,372

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Id: UfXHjGRWjkI

Length: 16min 31sec (991 seconds)

Published: Sun May 07 2023