Ainsley Thurgood/Photo Assistant

Hamilton’s rental licensing pilot provides more uncertainty as students demand safer housing 

The path to achieving safe housing for McMaster University’s students has been one studded with hazards such as predatory landlords, broken fire alarm systems and an overall lack of safety. Nearly every student I know has had their fair share of run-ins with landlords asking for too much and giving too little. Popular platforms for student discussion, such as r/McMaster on Reddit and Spotted at Mac on Facebook, are routinely flooded with warnings to beware of Landlord X, Y, Z . . . and the list goes on. 

Has quantifiable progress been made thus far? Yes and no. 

McMaster students and the McMaster Students Union have been pushing for increased regulation of landlords for years. On Aug. 10, 2021, it seemed as if student voices had finally been heard. The big news? The Hamilton Planning Committee voted in favour of a two-year rental licensing pilot for Wards 1, 8 and parts of Ward 14 in the city. These wards cover the immediate area around Mohawk College and McMaster University. 

Essentially, this means that landlords will now be responsible for paying a $215 licensing fee (in addition to a $77 administration fee) and must submit to both internal and external inspections by the city of Hamilton. Right now, the process in dealing with a housing issue is complaint-based and the tenant carries the burden of filing a dispute.

The current system presents its own set of barriers that tip the scales further towards the whims of landlords that don’t always have our best interests in mind. Quite honestly, even if I did face an issue with my landlord, would I be willing to take time away from academic responsibilities, face the threat of eviction and then wait months on end for a maybe-solution? Not at all.

Quite honestly, even if I did face an issue with my landlord, would I be willing to take time away from academic responsibilities, face the threat of eviction and then wait months on end for a maybe-solution? Not at all.

We all know that finding a house in the first place often takes away time from classes, especially when you’re coordinating the schedules of six or more roommates. If you add up the time spent browsing housing posts, negotiating with landlords and booking viewings, the hunt for subpar housing often takes upwards of 50 hours.

Given all this information, does the licensing pilot provide us with a solution? Supposedly, living conditions will improve. Perhaps, affordability will rise. That being said, the consensus of McMaster students living off-campus is that some aspect of regulation is needed. MSU Vice President Education, Siobhan Teel, teamed up with ACORN Hamilton and the Mohawk Student Association to shed light on the need for this pilot project to go through. 

However, it can’t be ignored that increasing fees on landlords (whatever glorious purpose it may serve) can have a detrimental effect on students. If landlords really are as predatory and greedy as we all believe, why wouldn’t they raise rent prices to compensate for their increased costs? Is rental licensing the solution we’re looking for, given that rents already seem to be rising on Facebook pages such as McMaster Student Housing Postboard?

Sure, the licensing pilot definitely has the potential to do some real good. It could lead to cleaner and safer homes, and do away with the antiquated, reactive system of tenant complaints through the Landlord and Tenant Board. Yet it almost seems like we’re playing a game of choosing between one bad outcome and another. 

While any progress is appreciated, McMaster students deserve a holistic, all-encompassing solution that solves the issue of both unsafe and unfairly priced housing. Until then, off to the bidding wars we go. The prize: a closet of a room with pests, no fire safety and all the wonderful things McMaster housing has to offer.

Photo by Cindy Cui / Photo Editor

As local businesses, schools and social gatherings face cancellations in response to the COVID-10 pandemic, major sports organizations have also been braving turbulent changes.

The four major national sports in North America — basketball, baseball, hockey and football — have all been greatly affected by the virus. The original plan was to have games continue, but not allow fans or unnecessary personnel near games.

In theory, this was a great idea; it would have allowed for play to continue and the multi-billion dollar industry to continue creating some revenue, such as through television ads. However, when the first pro athlete, Rudy Gobert, the center for the Utah Jazz, contracted the virus, this idea went out the window along with any hope of play to continue. After the NBA cancelled games, the rest of the sports world soon followed suit.

As the days progress, more professional athletes are testing positive for COVID-19. This has been attributed to athletes' consistent travels from city to city for games and practices, which makes them more susceptible to contracting the virus and spreading it. 

It has been suggested that the best way to mitigate exposure and transmission of the virus is for athletes to restrict travel and self-quarantine. 

When I read the reports of the National Basketball Association postponing its season for a minimum of 30 days, subject to change depending on the future state of the virus, and the National College Athletics Association ending all of its national tournaments for the year, I wondered how this may affect Canadian university sports. As updates and articles shared information about major sports leagues, the Ontario University Athletics and U Sports had yet to release statements on how they were going to factor the coronavirus into their decision-making.

University and college cancellations across Ontario began on March 12 and 13 with Western University, McMaster University, Mohawk College and others cancelling in-person classes and student events for the remainder of the semester. The U Sports association then followed suit, cancelling that weekends’ scheduled national championships in volleyball and hockey, but continuing with the curling championships.

U Sports’ championships require competing varsity teams to travel to chosen host locations. The volleyball championship was set to take place in Winnipeg and Calgary over the weekend of March 14 to 16 and the hockey championships to take place in Halifax and Charlottetown over that same weekend. 

Both of these tournaments were expecting teams from across the country to attend, from British Columbia to Prince Edward Island. This potentially heightened the risk of spreading the virus. To limit the spread of COVID-19, Canadians have been advised to avoid international non-essential travel; while the travel measures announced on March 16 did not include domestic flights, the situation is continuously changing from day to day. Recently, airlines such as Air Canada began suspending domestic flights. 

This begs the question of why the U Sports National Championships for curling were not cancelled. This tournament involved universities from all over the country such as McMaster University, University of Dalhousie and the University of Alberta, and took place the very same weekend as the aforementioned volleyball and hockey tournaments. 

At the time of writing this article, U Sports had yet to post any material on their social media to answer those questions or comment on why they made contradictory decisions to cancel volleyball and hockey tournaments, while continuing the curling championships. 

After having reached out to U Sports for a statement, John Bower of U Sports stated that the curling championships had been in line with government regulations at the time.

The total number of participants in the Curling championship was inferior to the 250 established by the Government of Manitoba on Thursday and therefore was allowed by the Province to continue and had begun prior to the cancellation of the hockey and volleyball championships,” said Bower. 

It is important to keep in mind that the volleyball championships, which were also planned to take place in Manitoba, and the hockey championships in Prince Edward Island were cancelled.

The following was the response to my questions about their tournament handlings:

As stated by Bower from U Sports.

While these precautions seemed to be adequate at the time of the curling tournament’s start date on March 10, the tournament would go on to see play for another five days. All the players and potential companions travelled in and out of the province over this time. 

The representative from U Sports said that Curling Canada was able to guarantee a safe and secure environment for the curling championships to take place. As we have seen the pandemic continue to spread, it seems that it would have been very difficult to guarantee anything. The tournament should have been shut down.

The U Sports national championships was not alone in the building. The event coincided with the Senior Men’s and Women’s Championships, the Canad Inns Canadian Mixed Doubles Championships and the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA)/Curling Canada Championships. 

The amount of people at any given time in the arena might have been under the mandated 250 person limit, but this limit became quickly outdated as the Centre for Disease Control lowered the limit to no more than 50 people just one day after the tournament finished on March 16. Considering the curling teams, general fans and family members that were in attendance, it is unlikely that this limit was adhered to during the tournament. 

The first red flag was that this tournament was continued while the other national tournaments were cancelled. The second red flag was that there was no postponing or cancelling as the tournament progressed. Just as COVID-19 spread across the country, the red flags spread across this event. 

 

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Photo C/O Doing It Justice: The Steam Museum in 3-D

When Hamilton designer Jennifer Kaye visited the Hamilton Museum of Steam and Technology National Historic Site, she was struck by the beauty and craftsmanship of the 19th century steam-powered water pumping engines. It was something that couldn’t quite be captured in a 2D image. That is why her images of the 1859 Waterworks are in 3D.

From Jan. 19 to Sept. 8, the Museum of Steam and Technology National Historic Site will host an exhibit of Kaye’s photography entitled Doing It Justice: The Steam Museum. The free exhibit will be housed in the Woodshed that forms part of the Victorian industrial building complex.

Kaye recently did a graphic design program at Mohawk College, during which she took a photography course. In that class, she was assigned to use an advanced photography technique and chose 3D photography. She felt the museum lent itself perfectly to the medium.

It's interesting to stand in the woodshed space and experience the engine in three dimensions without actually being there and looking at them. It has sort of a retro feel to it actually because we are using the old school three dimensional glasses, with the red and blue panes and the red and blue offset images. So it feels a bit like all the old school movies or even three dimensional comics,” said museum curator Richard Barlas.

3D photography is created by mimicking the way each human eye perceives a slightly different view. For each photograph, Kaye had to take two shots from slightly different angles and bring them together. When she reached out to the museum for help with the assignment, they loved it so much that they asked her to expand it so it could be displayed at the museum.

On Jan. 19, the opening reception for Doing It Justice took place, coinciding with the birthday of James Watt. Watt was an 18th century Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer who made significant improvements to the steam engine and thus contributed to the Industrial Revolution. The exhibit opening honoured his contributions to the modern world with birthday cake.

Aside from showcasing the machinery, the exhibit will educate patrons on 3D photography and machine art. Kaye prepared an essay highlighting the history of the two forms and the museum staff have been given information on the topic in order to engage visitors. As well, movies from the 1920s and 1930s with machinery in them will be playing in the exhibit.

3D photography became popular around the same time as the steam museum was built, making the use of one to illustrate the other even more fitting. Kaye also wrote in her essay about the early 20th century history of machine art, tracing its usage as a metaphoric icon to the modern acknowledgement of machines as beautiful objects.

“[There’s] real beauty in that kind of machinery. You know it's big and it's almost like it was made to be looked at and admired, you know, beautiful materials and… a real pride in the craftsmanship that I find really inspiring… And the art that uses that uses that iconography, I just find it appealing,” Kaye said.

Kaye hopes that the appreciation for the museum will increase and the exhibit helps to bring new visitors to see the steam engines. Barlas hopes that the exhibition gives those who cannot see the steam engines due to the lack of accessibility a way to experience the historic machinery.

“[T]he industrial past of Hamilton is so tied to its present and maybe to its future… we'll have to see. So I think places like the steam museum… honor a past about Hamilton that sometimes we prefer not to spend too much time thinking about, you know dirty industry and all of that, but that's who we are here. So yeah, I find that inspiring,” Kaye said.

The main goal of the steam museum is to promote education about the industrial and scientific history of Hamilton. Kaye has found a way to take a symbol of that history, the steam engines, and do it justice through art.

 

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Photo C/O Grace Kuang

By: Elliot Fung

Landlord licensing for rental housing may be coming for students in the near future. If approved by Hamilton city council, a two-year pilot project in wards one and eight will subject landlords to a $200 annual fee and city inspections for their rental units.

In September 2018, the rental housing sub-committee voted in favour of pursuing a rental housing licensing by-law pilot project. Other options considered at the time included increasing rental housing by-law enforcement and introducing a rental registry.

A draft of the by-law is in the works for approval and will be presented to the city council and the public later this year.

This is not the first time landlord licensing has been proposed in Hamilton. In September 2013, a controversial proposal for a city-wide rental housing licensing system was submitted to city council. The draft was abandoned amidst heavy opposition from landlords and affordable housing advocates.

This time, if implemented, the pilot project will only affect wards one and eight, where a significant number of McMaster and Mohawk College students live in rental units.

It is worth noting that McMaster students continue to express frustrations over negligent landlords who do not maintain rental properties and adhere to proper standards of health and safety.

Stephanie Bertolo, the vice president (Education) of the McMaster Students Union, has been involved with extensive consultations about the by-law pilot project and ardently supports landlord licensing. In particular, Bertolo believes that landlord licensing will significantly improve students’ safety and rectify many problems stemming from absentee landlords.

“The MSU has been a strong advocate for rental housing licensing because we believe it will help ensure safer housing for students,” she said. “Landlords should be held accountable by the municipal government for adhering to municipal and provincial laws to ensure students’ quality of life, who are paying to live in the landlords’ properties.”

While the rental housing by-law may serve to strengthen and ensure standards of health and safety are being met, critics of landlord licensing suggest that affordable housing issues would emerge if the pilot project were pursued.

For instance, at the December 2018 planning committee meeting, Arun Pathak, the president of the Hamilton and District Apartment Association, explained that the licensing by-law may result in increased rent for tenants and students looking to rent.

The rental housing sub-committee will be taking into consideration the potential financial implications of landlord licensing.

“[Financial] offsets [for stakeholders] will be discussed with various departments within the city of Hamilton’s economic development department,” said city of Hamilton communications officer Marie Fitzpatrick.

City council will likely update the approval status of the landlord licensing pilot within the next few months. In the meantime, the MSU has been working to introduce other initiatives aimed at addressing McMaster student housing issues.  

For instance, a new website for rating rental houses just launched this month.

The MSU hopes that once the wiki garners more popularity, students will be able to make more informed decisions about their housing situation. Students can access and add to the rating system at https://yomes.com/review/mcmaster.

 

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By: Maeb Shaban

I am not the most knowledgeable student when it comes to strikes. What I do know is that the effects of the current college faculty strike have affected me and many other students greatly. This needs to be addressed as it is impeding on our education.

Being in a college and university-based program has its perks, but when it comes to this strike, we students are definitely getting the short end of the stick.

The majority of classes in the nursing program function through the Mohawk College, but now with it being on strike most McMaster/college students are left with maybe one course to attend. The strike has been going for more than four weeks now. That means four weeks of missed class and labs for students in McMaster’s nursing, Bachelor of Technology, medical and radiation sciences and specific social science classes.

Not only did we pay an immense amount of money for a schedule of courses we now cannot attend, we may be forced to be in the classroom for a longer period of time due to the delay. Our winter break may even be cut short as a result. For students who have booked tickets to go home and be with their families for the holidays, getting a refund and breaking the news to your families must be difficult to do, but the alternate just puts you at a greater delay.

Seeing as instructors and the labour board are unaware of how they are going to make up this month of missed class time, students are left waiting to hear about how their future will be affected.

As of now, Mohawk-McMaster students are unaware of how their schedules are going to play out. There are so many students who are living off campus, paying rent and full tuition for what has become only one class. Can you imagine a student paying $600 a month in rent, then $4,000 for a full semester and only be learning one of those five courses? Mo-Mac students are not only losing money but also being forced to add time to their undergraduate careers.

Seeing as instructors and the labour board are unaware of how they are going to make up this month of missed class time, students are left waiting to hear about how their future will be affected.

It’s fair to say that we’re more stressed out about all this time wasted out of the classroom than we would be if we were in the classroom.

After watching a video on how the bargaining between the union and the labour board was going, I became infuriated. It was clear how stubborn the labour board was being and how they were not willing to settle easily. This wouldn’t be as much of a problem had our future have been considered and accounted for in the process.

From my understanding (and what the Ontario college bargaining team stated) Ontario Public Service Employee Union was given everything they wanted: increasing pay, greater rights for contract faculty, better job security for contract faculty and academic freedom guarantees. So why not return to the classroom and get back to what they are being paid to do to begin with?

As educators, instructors are setting a poor example for students who look up to them for a brighter future. Students are not asking for much. We are merely asking that we get what we are paying for, and since what we are paying for is our education, I don’t think we are asking for much.

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Dyson Wells

The Silhouette

A new app has been released to burst the campus “bubble.”

MyHamilton, a new community-based app, was released last Thursday at a City Hall event. The app was produced by a collaboration of McMaster University, Mohawk College, Columbia College, the City of Hamilton and Weever Apps.

While still in the growing stages, there are high expectations for the interface, which was named through a contest open to McMaster/Mohawk students.

The MyHamilton app attempts to address the issue of students not being connected with the community by offering students an interactive way to explore Hamilton and explore the culture and spirit of the city.

The McMaster Students Union conducted a survey last year to gauge students’ plans following the completion of their studies. Of the 800 students polled, 40 per cent stated they would not consider living in Hamilton following graduation, 24 per cent said they would not look for a job within the city and 34 per cent said they would only take the job as a last resort.

The app currently focuses on the downtown area, spanning from the escarpment to Bayfront Park, and from Wentworth Street to Dundurn Street.

Kathy Woo, Social Media and Digital Communications manager at the Student Success Centre, explained the app’s use of Twitter, as opposed to other social media platforms like Facebook.

“Hamilton is such a huge Twitter community, and that seems to be where a lot of the students are engaging right now. It’s immediate, it’s real-time, and it’s on the fly,” said Woo.

The app, using Twitter and Google Maps, enables users to explore Hamilton, sharing their finding with friends.

Once a post is made, the tweet, along with picture provided by the user, will appear as a pin on the map that will then be visible to other users.

The app also includes a list of discounts for local events and businesses, as well as directions and methods of transportation to navigate the city.

It is expected to give a leg up to local businesses in Hamilton while helping students find those “hidden gems” throughout the city.

The app’s profiling feature, in which students enter information such as their name, email, faculty and year of study, allows businesses to track their client demographic.

Talks regarding the development of the app have been going on since May. Discussions about the app’s progress and features will take place once feedback regarding the app has been received.
Gisela Oliveira, Employment Services Coordinator at the Student Success Centre, said, “the best part about this app is that it’s a student telling a student, or it’s a young professional telling a student [about local businesses].”

“It’s not necessarily the businesses shoving it down their throat that Hamilton is the place to be,” said Oliveira.

To get the app, students must scan a QR Code.

To join the Twitter conversation with MyHamilton, users must tweet a picture with the geolocation setting on and include the hashtag #MyHamilton.

Ryan Sparrow
The Silhouette

Questions are being raised with the quality and fairness of a new joint McMaster-Mohawk agreement.

A new program has been launched between Mohawk College and McMaster’s Faculty of Social Sciences. Mohawk says about 10% of their student population are university graduates looking to top up their undergraduate degree with a one-year certificate.

The program seeks to eliminate that extra year by allowing some social sciences elective courses to lead to a certificate with Mohawk College.

The Faculty of Social Sciences and Mohawk College have been studying ways to fast-track students through the process over the past two years with a letter of understanding signed on September 2011.

The program, which began last year as a pilot project, has now been officially launched with two certificates programs. According to McMaster officials, the certificates are in Business Studies and Leadership and Management in the Not-For-Profit Sector, while a third certificate called Introduction to Autism is in development.

Professors at colleges across the province have recently concluded new contract negotiations with their administrations.

During the negotiations, concerns were raised about the lack of academic freedom that the colleges give professors. The central demand of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), the union that represents Mohawk professors, was more academic freedom for professors alongside more job security.

Kevin MacKay, Mohawk professor and communications officer for OPSEU local 240, stated, “Currently, college professors have absolutely no academic freedom. The high school teachers in [the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association] (OECTA) actually have more academic freedom than we have after their recent contract. Academic freedom was the number one demand the college professors took into this round of bargaining, and we got nowhere with it.” OECTA represents 34,000 Catholic school teachers in the province.

MacKay says the concerns around academic freedom are real: “Currently, management in the college system is telling faculty what textbooks to use, how to deliver their material and how to evaluate it. They are even changing grades over faculty objections, and mandating delivery methods that lead to lower educational outcomes.

Edward Lovo, an undergraduate student at McMaster, has concerns with the lack of job security for many sessional professors at McMaster in light of the new program. Lovo stated, “I am interested in being a professor myself and I would hate these conditions to be imposed on me.”

Elizabeth Moore, the program’s coordinator, stated that some of the professors are only part-time at Mohawk College and hiring is not handled by McMaster.

College professors have no way to move up the ladder at McMaster to a tenured position. As professors are unable to engage in research in their fields, students may not be getting the cutting-edge insights that a tenured professor may offer.

Assistant Dean of Social Science Lynn Giordano says that the faculty has “enhanced the courses to [make them of university quality].”

Textbooks and course outlines were assessed through several committees, and one course was even deemed similar enough to a first year commerce course that it was listed as an anti-requisite. This leads to concerns about outsourcing sessional professor positions to Mohawk.

The Faculty did state that no courses were replaced by the introduction of the Mohawk-Social Science program but did not wish to provide information on how many classes were offered last year compared to this year, though an additional 800 seats were allocated in Social Science by the provost.

Collaborations between colleges and universities present exciting possibilities; however, while college professors lack academic freedom and both colleges and universities continue to rely on part-time over full-time professors, questions remain concerning job security and quality of education.

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