By Nuren Nawar
As someone who lives in an area that is heavily saturated by Bangladeshi people, I have witnessed a plethora of urban issues in my community. My neighbourhood, which is officially known as Oakridge in Ward 121, has a high Bangladeshi population. 55.2 percent of the neighbourhood’s population is immigrants, with 12.9 percent of those immigrants being recent immigrants. 2470 of these immigrants were born in Bangladesh, making it the top selected place of birth for all immigrants. Additionally, there is 26.1 percent of second-generation immigrants in Oakridge, making there a total of 81.3 percent of first and second-generation immigrants combined.
Oakridge is known for being a low-income community with high poverty levels. In 2016, the neighbourhood had a 43.8 percent poverty rate among residents. Toronto has a poverty rate of 23.9 percent, which means that Oakridge’s poverty rate is exactly double that of Toronto’s. The individuals in Oakridge that face poverty experience all of the damaging effects of it, including lack of access to education and job opportunities, unhealthy living styles, discrimination, and poor physical and mental health. Once people begin experiencing poverty, it’s extremely difficult for them to pick themselves up again, which decreases their overall quality of life. The median household income, along with the median family income in Oakridge are both much lower when compared to the median household and family incomes of Toronto.
Despite Oakridge being a poor neighbourhood, there are not a lot of affordable housing options in the neighbourhood. Most property in Oakridge is extremely expensive, and it’s extremely difficult for community members to purchase their own property in the neighbourhood due to these incredibly high housing costs. Because of this, many residents choose to settle in large apartment buildings as renters. As we can see from the chart to the right, 68.2 percent of Oakridge's population live in renter households, and 61.2 percent of the population lives in 5+ story apartments. Additionally, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's (CMHC) has Core Housing Needs that indicate when dwellings are deemed as unsuitable and/or unaffordable. According to those indications, 24.8 percent of dwellings in Oakridge are considered unsuitable and 43.4 percent are considered unaffordable. 12.1 percent of Toronto's dwellings are considered unsuitable, while 36.6 percent are considered unaffordable. This means that unsuitable and unaffordable housing is much more common in Oakridge than it is in the rest of Toronto.
Recently, there have been many signs of gentrification in Oakridge. One of the most prominent signs of gentrification in this low-income neighbourhood is the consistent increase in housing prices, more specifically the increase in renting prices. As mentioned before, there’s a lack of affordable housing in Oakridge, so most of the population in Oakridge resides in large apartment buildings as renters. Over the past couple of years, new landlords have begun managing these apartment buildings. They’ve been renovating older apartments, and the building in general, and increasing rent. Many pre-existing tenants cannot afford this rent, so they begin moving out, whilst wealthier, and typically whiter, people who can afford to pay the new rent begin moving in. Original tenants tend to move into areas much further away from Oakridge where they are able to find housing that meets their financial needs. Oakridge is only in the beginning stages of becoming gentrified, yet we are able to see the immense harm that it has already caused the community. One of the biggest impacts of gentrification in Oakridge that I’ve noticed is the slow disappearance of the Bangladeshi community. As previously mentioned, Oakridge has a dominating Bangladeshi community. Most of the people a part of the Bangladeshi community live in apartment buildings, and many of them are a part of the group of people that have started moving out of these apartment buildings due to the increasing rent. This has led to a decline in the Bangladeshi community in the neighbourhood. The friendships that Bangladeshi people had with each other are slowly breaking and the overall sense of closeness and community are disappearing. This is quite saddening because a big reason that many people choose to inhabit this neighbourhood was the close-knit Bangladeshi community, but now this community is slowly breaking apart because of gentrification.
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