"Jane and Finch" to become "University Heights

Excalibur (York University)
TORONTO (CUP) - A Toronto city councillor is calling for one of the city's toughest neighbourhoods to re-brand itself as "University Heights."
Anthony Perruzza, councillor for the notorious Jane and Finch neighbourhood claimed that the re-branding will bring the community and the university together, continuing to fight the neighbourhood's reputation for violence and hopelessness.
"University Heights, and York University, they re-enforce positive thoughts," Perruzza said. "I'm hoping that it will kick-start a renaissance of the area."
Richard Fisher, chief marketing and communications officer for York University, said that York supports the concept, pointing out that The Village, located beside York University, was deliberately built to accommodate the surrounding neighbourhood.
"York really wants to reach out to the neighbourhood, particularly during the 50th year [next year], so we are very much in step with the initiative," he said.
The city is slated to change some of the neighbourhood street signs to feature the new University Heights label.
However, some local groups believe the name change will do nothing to address the real issues that affect their community.
"I thought maybe it was just a PR thing," said Paul Nguyen, webmaster of Jane-Finch.com, a community activist website. "All this re-branding and all this political-correctness actually makes things worse and it just distracts from the real problem."
A 2006 documentary about the neighbourhood, called Lost in the Struggle, found that it had a higher rate of immigrants and people new to Canada, a higher rate of youth and children, a higher rate of single parents, a higher rate of low-income families, a higher proportion of rental households, a higher rate of unemployment, a lower percentage of population with university education (despite being located next to York University), and a higher percentage of population with less than a high school education.
"Calling it University Heights is not going to do jack," said Nguyen.
Farid Chaharlangi, a community development worker at the Jane and Finch Community and Family Centre, agreed with Nguyen.
"I'm not sure it's going to make any difference [due to] some of the fundamental issues that people in the community are facing, such as unemployment, poverty and housing issues," he said.
"These aren't going to go away."
Perruzza admitted that a simple name change is not going to solve all the problems the community faces.
"It doesn't pretend to say, because we're going to have another name by which we can reference the community, that [it] will alter anybody's state of being, other than perhaps give some folks a sense of pride of place," he said.
University Heights is also the name of some of the original housing projects that were built in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood.
Despite this fact, many people in the community are attached to the unofficial "Jane and Finch" name and refer to it as a source of pride.
"For those people that feel that they want to use Jane-Finch as a label for where they live, they're welcome to do that," Perruzza said.
"In no way, shape or form does my initiative point the finger at anybody."
The City of Toronto is also planning to extend the subway line to meet the neighbourhood, which Perruzza claimed will also help with the re-branding process.
"The subway is a massive positive; it's a $2.2-billion investment in this community," he said.
"Hopefully we'll be able to re-design some of the projects and re-build some of those areas that are now dilapidated and running themselves into the ground. Obviously that's a much longer term plan, but I'm hoping that it'll be very much part of the renaissance.