Parkdale

From Rap Dictionary

noun

Parkdale

Parkdale is in the city of Toronto, Canada and are boanded by Dufferin roard to the east, Roncesville to the west, Queen street to the north and the Lakeshore to the south. It began as a residential suburb, was incorporated as a village in 1878, became a town in 1885 and was annexed to the city in 1888. As property values plummeted, swaths of land were expropriated to erect social housing. In the mid 1980s, the Ontario provincial government decided to release many long-term care mental illness patients from its Queen Street and Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital facilities as a cost-cutting measure. The old Victorian mansions of Parkdale had long been converted to boarding houses. Parkdale is one of the most diverse areas of the city, with many new immigrants finding their first homes here, due to the lower rents. Over the last two decades, prostitution and drug use have been issues of concern to many in the community, but so has police harassment of street people. Parkdale's 1 of the 9 hoods featured on The Real Toronto DVD.