SAFETY SQUAD
Roding Park neighbourhood residents band together to stop sexual assaults,
Maria Negri squints in the spring late-day sun, pointing to a rolling hill dotted with dandelions where she used to sit with her brother to watch baseball.
She has lived around the corner from sprawling Roding Park for 39 years.
The park is an oasis in the middle of an ordinary suburban neighbourhood, a rare green space for the eight-storey Toronto Community Housing Corp. (TCHC) building that overlooks it, bordered on the other side by a thriving community centre that offers yoga and seniors’ tai chi.
But lately, it’s been drawing headlines for sexual assault. There have been three reported in the park since 2014, with the latest in March 2016.
“Something has to be done to make it safe and so we can enjoy it,” said Negri, one of about 15 neighbourhood women wearing light green ribbons on a ladies’ solidarity walk through the park at Keele St. and Wilson Ave. on a recent evening.
“The last one really made me nervous because it was noon; it was broad daylight.”
Toronto Police put out a sketch of a suspect later that month.
Not long ago, the community was billed as a TCHC success story, heralded as a triumph in mixed-use housing. Built in 1993, the apartments at Roding Park Place include 98 subsidized units and 26 at market rent.
Surrounding the park are family homes, with two schools and a hospital nearby.
Local city councillor Maria Augimeri said she wants to get more people into the park, which sits tucked back from the street with some areas hidden from sight, to make it safer for everyone.
Some people have suggested women shouldn’t be walking in the park alone, but that’s something Augimeri doesn’t accept.
“If a man can walk in Roding Park, a woman should be able to walk in Roding Park,” she said.
Augimeri will be applying for grants to put in adult exercise equipment, and will ask council in the next few months for money to expand the existing children’s playground, she said. She also plans to ask staff to look into putting cameras into the park. Police have already stepped up patrols.
Women are twice as likely to be sexually assaulted by a man they know than by a stranger, according to Statistics Canada, but the assaults in the park have left many neighbours on edge.
Luis Oliva, a tenant representative at the nearby Roding Park Place, said he hasn’t let his kids walk alone there since hearing about it.
“Since that incident happened, it’s like 50 per cent less people walking through alone,” he said. “We’re still afraid.” Oliva, who has lived at Roding Park Place for about 15 years, said the Wil- son Ave. building is cleaner and safer than other TCHC communities.
The building is newer, the elevators generally work and people are more engaged with the community.
The problems — such as a recent break-in to a car in the underground parking lot — are caused by people who don’t live in the community, he said.
Still, given recent events, he would like to see TCHC special constables patrol more often.
Maria Mihajlovic, who has lived in the neighbourhood for 14 years, said the community needs to “take back” the park, and she’s noticed people not using it as much after the most recent sexual assault.
“This is just getting out of hand now; we’ve never had this before,” she said.
For Augimeri, herself a product of community housing, Roding Park is a “thriving, beautiful community,” with many seniors and a prominent Italian population, facing the same challenges as other neighbourhoods across the city, including break-and-enters.
“Before any of this happened, just a couple of short years ago, no one would even think twice about walking alone in Roding Park. I want those days to come back,” Augimeri said.