Hidden pockets of gentrification in the city
Only 0.4 per cent of Toronto actually made the transition from low- to high-income neighbourhood
At the corner of Morse St. and Queen St. E. in Leslieville, the signifiers of gentrification are on full display at Mercury Espresso Bar — a man with an artfully trimmed beard reads the paper while Kate Bush music plays cloyingly in the background, drowned out by the hiss and whistle of the espresso machine.
“I am the eye of the storm, I am the gentrification,” jokes barista Tyler Semrick-Palmateer as he makes a perfectly crafted Americano.
Semrick-Palmateer, the barista, is himself a bit of a hybrid gentrifier — he works in Leslieville and lives at Clinton and Harbord Sts., another bastion of Toronto’s affluent hipsterism. But the 30-something musician also grew up not far from the cafe, on Broadview Ave., and remembers the neighbourhood’s less shiny past.
A block away from the cafe in Leslieville, Jim’s Restaurant, a classic family restaurant famous for its Western sandwiches, is boarded up to make room for a six-storey condominium.
“It’s a vastly different place,” Semrick-Palmateer said.
“I don’t know what it will be replaced with, probably not some old-school . . . diner. Probably some sort of specialty vapour shop.”
In 2006, the average household income in South Riverdale/Leslieville was $70,093, placing it in the bottom 40 per cent of neighbourhoods in the city.
By 2015, that figure had leapt to $103,384 — a 47-percent increase that placed the neighbourhood in the top 35 per cent by income in the city.
On some blocks, incomes rose as much as 76 per cent.
House prices skyrocketed there, too. Excluding condominiums, the average price of a home increased by a whopping 140 per cent — from $319,753 in 2005 to $764,124 in 2015, according to data provided by Realosophy.
(The neighbourhood was defined as the area within the Don Valley, Eastern Ave., Coxwell Ave. and Gerrard St. E.)
From the Junction to Trinity Bellwoods to South Riverdale, you might think you see the signs of gentrification on every corner of Toronto.
Home prices have skyrocketed across the city in the past decade, but very few neighbourhoods have actually met the technical definition of “gentrified,” a Star analysis has found.
While 22 per cent of the city showed some sign of gentrification, only 0.4 per cent actually made the transition from low- to high-income neighbourhood over the past 10 years.
Gentrification is about more than just the clip-clop of designer heels on the pavement — it’s a total economic and social transformation, says Alan Walks, a researcher at the University of Toronto who studies gentrification in the city.
Based on the data, pockets of the city in South Riverdale/Leslieville, Trinity Bellwoods, the Junction, Dovercourt-Wallace Emerson, Little Portugal,s North St. James Town, the Blake-Jones area of the Danforth and the Annex made the leap.
Incomes in gentrified neighbourhoods climbed by an average of 53 per cent, from about $65,000 to $99,500, according to data provided by Environics. Across the city as a whole, income increased by only 18 per cent.
Walks says that gentrification isn’t a synonym for a good real-estate investment as much as a symptom of the city’s growing inequality.
Coupled with a citywide housing bubble, gentrification drives housing prices up and pushes poor people out, far away from jobs and services.
“There is a misconception that gentrification is a positive thing overall, that it has some net social benefit,” Walks said.
“What gentrification involves is the displacement of renters from the very neighbourhoods that are best for renters.”
To identify neighbourhoods affected by gentrification, the Star adapted a basic method used by Walks and other researchers and looked for big changes in income at the neighbourhood level.
If the neighbourhood’s average household income was in the bottom 40th percentile in 2006, our analysis considered a “candidate” for gentrification. If income grew faster than the citywide average of 18 per cent, it was considered as gentrifying.
If it jumped to the top 40th percentile in 2015, it was considered gentrified.
Terry Brackett remembers a time when Leslieville wasn’t such a hot ticket. An east-end resident since she was a child, Brackett raised her children in Leslieville in the 1980s at a time when most of her neighbours were moving to the suburbs in Scarborough.
One time, while attending a charity fundraiser in Rosedale, Brackett told a woman her address.
“Good Lord where’s that?” the woman asked. “Do you mean people still live there?”
“That really annoyed me,” Brackett said.
Inspired to boost her neighbourhood’s reputation, Brackett campaigned for the fading industrial area near her home on Leslie St. to be christened Leslieville, after the former township.
But turning Leslieville from a working-class neighbourhood to what it is today took more than a new name. It took almost 30 years.
Walks, an expert on gentrification in Toronto and its effects on inequality, attributes the “stalled” gentrification in Leslieville to the city’s desire to preserve local industry in the 1970s and 1980s and a termite infestation that lasted well into the 1990s. Although media reports had warned for years that Leslieville was the next big thing, it wasn’t until the new millennium that the neighbourhood really took off.
“I think when Starbucks came in, everybody said it was a sign,” says Dan Michaluk, a Leslieville resident since 2003.
On Leslieville’s stretch of Queen St. E., the incredible growth of wealth is as clear as the display window at the artisanal pet supply store.
The Starbucks that opened at the corner of Logan Ave. and Queen St. E. in 2006 was just the tip of the iceberg. Between 2005 and 2015, the number of cafes and quick-service restaurants on Queen St. E. between Don Valley and Leslie St. more than doubled, from 12 establishments to 27, according to data provided by Ryerson University.
Bars almost doubled, from seven watering holes in 2005 to 13 in 2015. Full-service restaurants grew by almost 52 per cent, from 29 in 2005 to 38 in 2015.
For Michaluk, this growth in retail is a good thing.
“Complain about gentrification?” he said, incredulously. “I can’t say there’s many things I’ve loved that have gone away. I’m trying to think of the more gritty aspects of our neighbourhood that I’ve appreciated, and I can’t identify anything. Everything I’ve liked seems to be here.”
But not everybody can afford to keep up with the changes on Jones Ave.