Dear Urban Diplomat: how can I relocate nearby drug addicts while I sell my Moss Park condo?
Dear Urban Diplomat,
Is there anything I can do to relocate the throng of drug addicts that has congregated on the corner of my street near Moss Park? They’re more or less harmless, but I’m trying to sell my condo, and they’re a bit of a disincentive for potential buyers.
—Condo seller with a conundrum,
MOSS PARK
The key to your real estate success is attitude. Cast in a certain, albeit slightly absurd, light, those pesky drug addicts and their dealers are a selling feature. Your condo offers an authentic urban experience—a window onto a bustling local economy—that suburbanites can only approximate by watching episodes of The Wire (I am a glass-is-half-full kind of guy). But if your real estate agent isn’t bold enough to work that angle, you need a quick-fix distraction to lure the loiterers away temporarily. Paying them to relocate for a day will most likely turn you into an enabler, so I suggest you make like a good Torontonian and barbecue. After acquiring the necessary city permits, set up your grill in a nearby but out-of-sight park, throw a picnic and invite the masses to join you for pulled pork sandwiches (don’t skimp on the grainy mustard and homemade cornichons). Meanwhile, your agent can show potential buyers your pad and its pristine environs (they too will be subconsciously wooed by the faint scent of barbecue in the air). The drugsters get a hearty meal, you might even get to know them a little (they may be curb-appeal killers, but they’re also people with life stories to tell), and nobody need ever know about your ulterior motives.
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You might get to know them too well. Bring a wallet with no identification and very little money in it, in case of a mugging. I have discovered drug addicts do not really appreciate social niceties like a barbeque, and they have no respect for the host, except in the way a parasite enjoys a host.
You bought in Moss Park. What did you expect?
Sometimes i forget how pathetic people who flip condos are… Let me get this straight — You buy a condo in poor/ drug infested neighbourhood and then complain about the fact you have to put up with these people and their awful lives — maybe you should be thankful you have it so good…
I also live close to moss park and I like to think of the crackheads as charming urban street theatre.