Who are you calling a nuisance?

We partied, once upon a time

There are some undergrad house parties I remember more than others. Few ever got out-of-hand and, if they did, I didn’t stick around long. My living at home on the west mountain during all of undergrad, the infrequency of the 34-Upper Paradise bus, and my dislike of cabs (I couldn’t hold a conversation for a whole car ride up the mountain with a stranger because I would inevitably start talking about politics and that just…never ended well) meant that I was usually only in attendance for the first two hours of any get-together. This was both a good thing and a source of major regret.

But the ones I was able to stick around for (and, importantly, remember) always felt like such important affairs. Some were held by friends, where we’d settle in front rooms of sparsely-furnished Westdale homes, soft indie music wafting from an adjoining dining room featuring little more than someone’s grandparent’s old kitchen set now hosting a lackluster game of beerpong, all quiet enough to allow us to have conversations about conversations. Some were in overcrowded basement rec rooms of 70’s style homes in Ainslie Wood, where we’d sink into couches as old as us and drink what we thought was craft beer, trying to not spill any on carpets made of dust and chemical compounds now illegal for use in modern buildings. Some would spill out into overlong backyards, where you’d stand in a t-shirt and a tuque on a February night and watch your breath and take in the smell of cold and cigarettes and weed and a newly finished deck that looked almost purposefully out-of-place among a yard of slowly rusting bikes and a shed that housed little more than the property manager’s old lawnmower and a family of raccoons.

Each of these gatherings were expressions of our burgeoning adulthood. We had driver’s licences and had jobs and could vote. We had rent we couldn’t afford and credit cards we never paid and student loans that kept piling up. We had responsibilities and duties and stressors. These little gatherings were ways for us to socialize and live in that oft-maligned liminal space between childhood and full adulthood. These were ways for us to just be who we were in that moment.

I’d spend a lot of time at these parties talking to other nerds about how we’d change the world. We’d talk about building community and reimagining our neighbourhoods and bringing people together.

It wasn’t lost on me that these conversations were happening in spaces that were actively hostile to the ideas we discussed.

Nice by-law you have there

As reported in local media, the City of Hamilton and the Hamilton Police Service (HPS) enacted the University District Safety Initiative, or “UDSI” lasting from Friday, March 17th to the end of Sunday, March 19th.

The UDSI was created after the infamous 2021 Homecoming Event on Dalewood, wherein over 5,000 people crowded Dalewood Avenue, drinking, getting rowdy, and being generally disrespectful to Mazda. By all accounts, the entire event was a complete disaster, further dividing students and long-time residents in an area where town and gown conflicts are commonplace. The “unsanctioned” parties resulted in multiple arrests, including of people with no connection to McMaster or Hamilton, and spurred the creation of the UDSI and Hamilton’s Nuisance Party By-law.

The Nuisance Party By-law is inspired by a similar by-law in Kingston, which has also had issues with large, rowdy student parties in the neighbourhoods around Queen’s. Indeed, the entire UDSI idea was also lifted from Kingston. While there are similar by-laws in Guelph and Waterloo, the Kingston plan is the ideological sibling of what has been implemented in Hamilton.

So what is this Nuisance Party By-law anyway?

According to the text of the by-law, a Nuisance Party is any gathering which results in any one of the following:

• public disorderly conduct

• public drunkenness or public intoxication

• the unlawful sale, furnishing, or distribution of alcoholic beverages or controlled substances

• the deposit of refuse on public or private property

• damage to or destruction of public or private property

• pedestrian traffic, vehicular traffic, or illegal parking that obstructs the free flow of traffic or could interfere with the ability to provide emergency services

• unreasonable noise, including loud music or shouting that is of such a volume or nature that it is likely to disturb the inhabitants of the City

• unlawful open burning or fireworks

• public disturbances, including public brawls or public fights

• outdoor public urination or defecation

• use of or entry upon a roof not intended for such occupancy

Aww, man. Guess my annual “Shoot Fireworks at People Brawling on a Roof and Death Metal Concert” is cancelled.

Having by-laws on the books that explicitly say we won’t tolerate loud, obnoxious, informal events is probably a good thing, though, as with any law, the way it is interpreted and applied may have issues for civil liberties down the line. And arguments can be made about “carrot v stick”, specifically focusing all our energy on punishing rather than providing a healthy outlet. More on that in a minute.

This by-law is pretty standard. The UDSI is another thing altogether.

Hamilton’s UDSI identifies two “areas” of concern: Westdale West and the “Dalewood” community in Ainslie Wood.1

These are huge areas. The two UDSI “areas” constitute 16% of Westdale's landmass and 13% of Ainslie Wood's. They capture some of the poorest census tracts in the city and some of the wealthiest. They feature heritage districts and major roads and long-standing businesses and trails and waterways. And, when the UDSI is active, they are “subject to zero-tolerance enforcement,” according to the city. As a local resident told the CBC, "The way they [the HPS] handled it last September, they handled it really well. They blocked off everything here and nobody was allowed to enter or leave."2 😬.

Here’s another view of the UDSI areas.

From this Google Maps image, it may be hard to see, but there’s one really interesting thing about these two areas.

There are almost no places to buy alcohol within their borders.

Westdale and Ainslie Wood have a couple of spots to grab a drink. Some are more geared toward other residents, some are student-oriented, and some are a mix of both. But none of them are inside the USDI boundaries.

Emerson 109, the Snooty Fox, and the Main West Boston Pizza are all near the borders of the USDI areas. But of the eight places around campus to grab a drink, none fall inside these areas of extra vigilance.3

And, while there are two on-campus bars, there are few, if any, sanctioned campus events for St. Patrick’s Day. Indeed, it seems like the most the university was willing to do was to issue a statement reminding people about the UDSI.

So, the way I see it, the UDSI is, as a 2018 Kingston mayoral candidate described their city’s UDSI, a “sledgehammer in place of a fly swatter.”4 And there are two main reasons this is an issue: poor land use and poor prioritization on the part of McMaster.

And the people in the houses all went to the university

Westdale and Ainslie Wood are wonderful communities. It is no secret that I love Hamilton’s west end. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t places where we can better use the land we have.

Let’s just isolate Ainslie Wood. The eastern, central, and northern portions of Ainslie Wood are where student housing is predominant. Streets like Hollywood, Ward, Royal, Bowman, and Broadway all have very high concentrations of student housing.

The main thoroughfare north/south in Ainslie Wood is Emerson, which serves as both a transit route and the gateway to campus. Main Street West is the central commercial corridor and the student-dense portions of the community are surrounded by utility corridors and greenspace, creating a ring of green around much of the community.

One problem with the land use in Ainslie Wood is that it is mainly single and semi-detached housing. While many of these homes have been carved into 6, 8, or even 12 bedrooms for students, the general structure of most of the houses in Ainslie Wood resembles conventional single detached housing elsewhere in the city. Even when new homes have been built, they still barely employ the whole lot and make no effort to provide mixed-use or sufficient density. Investors take a look at houses near Mac and scoop them up to use as rental income-generating properties without any consideration for nearby residents or for the well-being of the students they intend to house. By allowing the market to do as it pleases, municipal authorities are enabling the conditions for out-of-control parties and conflict.

So students are spread across the community, cramped into accommodations that do not provide sufficient space for socialization, and find themselves far from any amenities that may allow them a chance to blow off steam in a more directed way. Wanting to have a little fun, their best option is to throw a house party and be done with it. But a personal event means that the few ways we have to prevent things from getting out of hand are removed from the equation.

A night out drinking at a bar can end when a SmartServe licenced bartender cuts you off or it hits last call. A night out drinking on the front lawn of a crumbling 1.5 storey doesn’t have those safeguards.

But the way we’ve structured the community means that it is easier for people to party in their rented accommodations than it is to celebrate at a licenced establishment nearby. We have let the private market provide student housing in a way that makes the most financial sense, rather than encourage targeted intensification that can provide more mixed-use buildings, more student-specific buildings, and less conflict between long-term residents and students.

I hate to keep drawing these comparisons (because once someone goes to Montreal, they usually never shut up about having gone to Montreal, and I don’t know if you know this, but I lived in Montreal), but the near-campus community by McGill is a textbook example of great urban density.

Walk-ups and apartments and ground-floor retail and shops and bike lanes and a tight-knit community, all clustered within 5 blocks and a 5 minute walk from campus. There are still problems with partying and drunkenness and general hooliganery, as there tend to be in urban areas, but there are more outlets for students looking to blow off some steam and experiment with adulthood in a healthier way.

Now take a look at Ainslie Wood from the same angle:

The insistence on maintaining suburban characteristics in the community directly adjacent to one of the largest and most prestigious universities in Canada is a recipe for conflict.

And speaking of that large and prestigious university…

It is the responsibility of a university to be more than a degree mill and money printing enterprise. A university must be a community. It is a place where people come to learn, ask difficult questions, figure out who they are and who we are and where we all ought to go.

At the onset of the pandemic, the university stepped back from providing healthy outlets for students in the form of sanctioned, coordinated events. Even during my time at Mac, the university often balked at the idea of hosting large events. It was always a struggle to get university admin on board with everything from Welcome Week to Homecoming to winter socials. COVID-19 provided them the out they always seemed to want. Even now, as we are finding ways to better manage the pandemic and to effectively socialize in safer ways, the university has still not stepped back up to provide coordinated events.

During the pandemic, the university avoided hosting any gatherings or providing any outlets for community that students expected. Then, when an unsanctioned gathering got out of hand, they had the audacity to chastise students, rather than recognize their own role to play in the Homecoming disaster.

Mac dropped Mentos in a Coke bottle, screwed the lid on tight, and then lectured the remnants when the whole thing exploded. And now, instead of learning from their mistake, they take the time to scold whatever’s left on the anniversary of the first explosion.

Talking conversation at the casual party

How do we fix this? By which I mean, how do we make it so that fencing students in and making everyone in west Hamilton feel like they’re living in a police state at select times a year isn’t our go-to solution? How do we make students feel like part of the community so that our graduate retention goals are met? How do we provide space for all residents of west Hamilton to socialize and build community and thrive?

There are a whole host of things we can do to change the on-the-ground situation around campus. We can build out the missing middle, focusing on walk-ups, small apartments, duplexes, and all sorts of infill can provide better, safer, and more holistic student accommodation in west Hamilton. We can create a branch of CityHousing that partners with the McMaster Student Union and other groups on campus to provide co-op housing to students at low cost. We can draft a secondary plan for Ainslie Wood that sets ambitious intensification targets in areas of high need. We can place an emphasis on upzoning and encouraging the construction of mixed-use buildings, paired with an investment and small business/co-op incubator program to provide commercial space for, in particular, businesses started by new graduates. We can ensure the provision of community spaces for gatherings of all kinds to provide students with space and a healthy outlet for socialization. We can dramatically improve transit in west Hamilton, allowing students easier access to bars, clubs, restaurants, cafes, and theatres in the core. And we can create an advisory committee of students living both on and off campus to provide an often-overlooked perspective on important civic issues.

McMaster can also do a better job of hosting events that provide alternatives to attending rowdy houseparties. The administration can partner with the student unions and social clubs to provide people with a whole load of options for where they can spend their St. Patrick’s Day. And the university can do a better job of providing more safe housing to students (that isn’t built through shady public-private partnerships).

The UDSI is a tool that reflects the reality of the town and gown conflict in west Hamilton. It is not ambitious, it does not seek to correct the underlying problems, and it does little to make students feel like a part of this community. It takes problems of urban design and institutional reprioritization and makes them police matters. Rather than providing a stronger sense of communities, we’re providing cops. Rather than giving people a healthy outlet, we’re penning them in. Rather than reimagining our neighbourhoods, we’re using the same old tired tools, namely a “sledgehammer in place of a fly swatter.”

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We just need new ideas on how our city should look. How it should work for everyone. How we all need places to be.

Guess all these years later, the topic of conversation at any party I’m invited to is building community and reimagining our neighbourhoods and bringing people together. Only now, I have less hair and better taste in beer.

Hey big spender

Spectator columnist Scott Radley published a piece last week about the city’s “looming 6.7 percent tax increase.” The opinion piece warns voters that, once a 6.7% increase is approved, it will be normalized and that taxes will keep going up and up and up. Radley takes aim at some popular policy proposals like ending area rating, universalizing transit, the city’s new climate office, funding social services and *spooky voice* RUNNING LRT *ghost noises, finger waving, general hackneyed sarcasm*. Dismissing the idea that inflation is behind much of this, Radley writes that it is the overly ambitious plans of a tax-and-spend council that is behind what he sees as an unreasonable tac increase. “…they could’ve shown restraint in a tough time. Instead, they’ve decided to go big,” he writes.5

I don’t take issue with Radley’s column. Why would I? These are the exact talking points you’d expect from local media with a centre/centre-right bent. Radley is one of the Spec’s main opinion columnists now and presents things from the perspective of a more cautious, conservative, taxpayer-focused commentator. It is important to have a lot of voices at the table because a healthy democracy can only function when we have a diversity of opinions presented.

That’s actually where my issue comes in. We don’t have a diversity of opinions presented. Radley and the Spec are the institution in this city. We have one major paper with a specific editorial outlook.

A while back, I posted a thread on Twitter about letters to the editor on bike lanes. I can’t find it for the life of me and, if I’m being honest, spending more than 20 minutes on Twitter these days is enough to make my brain overheat like a desktop running Cities: Skylines with all 1,985 available mods in an un-air conditioned room during a July heatwave. So apologies for not linking to it here.

But the idea behind that thread was that sometimes the most incendiary and controversial takes are printed because those who harbour those beliefs are the ones with the audacity to take advantage of the forums we have at our disposal. And many opinions, particularly those that are rooted in anger (especially anger at a politician/group of politicians/large institutions), just lend themselves to these formats. I mean, what’s easier:

• shouting at a cloud about those clowns down at city hall spending money on things you don’t understandOR

• learning about the complex intricacies of municipal funding based on the constitutionally-delimited powers of local bodies and the increasingly fraught nature of provincial funding in an age of vapid neoliberal populism that has thrown civic priorities into chaos, complicated by runaway inflation and global economic uncertainty as late capitalism grinds into a fine, authoritarian powder?

The cantankerous get published because their opinions get views and clicks. And columnists respond to this, presenting their own opinions to both influence the conversation and drive engagement.

We see progressive takes all too infrequently. And that’s because, as I’ve mentioned before, progressive activists and political figures are stretched thin. There are wonderful folks doing great work on racial justice, environmental advocacy, housing reform, worker’s rights, and transportation improvements, just to name a few important areas of focus. But there aren’t enough coordinating bodies that can help present a progressive view of the world and aim to drive the narrative in the same way right-wingers can.

Progressives are organizing on a municipal-level in other cities. Groups like Progress Toronto and Horizon Ottawa are bodies dedicated to providing a forward-thinking narrative, running campaigns on important issues, sending out press-releases with policy recommendations, and endorsing candidates in municipal elections.

Let’s imagine something for a minute:

The \Widget Factory building, abandoned for years, has finally burned down. The mean old owner, who has neglected to pay their taxes for years, has fled to their cottage in Gravenhurst and is unwilling to deal with the mess. The neighbourhood around the Widget Factory wants something done, in part because the smell of burning widgets is rather unpleasant. And, at night, they say if you listen closely, you can hear the ghostly cries of the crispy little widgets on the east wind…

A Hamilton-based, grassroots progressive organization can spring into action. Research-oriented folks within the group can develop a plan to turn the former factory into a community of mixed-use, affordable buildings run as a co-op with ample space for low-income families and commercial ventures. They can cost it out, develop timelines, and work with planners and architects to bring the vision to light. Then the group’s organizing superstars can run campaigns on the issue. They can issue press releases, canvass the surrounding neighbourhood, run days of action on the event, delegate at city hall, meet with councillors and city staff, and push the issue. The group’s skilled writers can submit letters and articles to the Spec, and counter any talking points from right-leaning columnists who may focus on the negatives (“The cost to expropriate the Widget Factory lands will be outrageous! We deserve a tax cut instead. Those clowns down at city hall are just clowning around with our money, the clowns!”)

If there’s pushback from city hall, the progressive group can run campaigns to make voters aware of the opposition and endorse supportive candidates in the next election. They can take the real, day-to-day issues we face in Hamilton and create actionable, realistic policy, coordinating previously disparate but ideologically-similar folks, and advancing a forward-thinking agenda.

Beyond fighting for a better Widget Factory plan, this group can provide that counterbalance to the prevailing narratives in the city. When a columnist like Radley or any of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation folks or the grumpy anti-social service brigade has a piece in the Spec or when NIMBYs and anti-vaxxers and reactionaries delegate at city hall, an organized progressive group can be the counterbalance, responding to articles, to right-wing messaging, to the forces who have little ambition. Most importantly, an organized progressive group can help ensure left policies get their due in the discourse and can even help set the agenda, ensuring progressives aren’t always just on the defence, responding to the right.

Hamilton has some amazing progressive folks, all doing incredible work. I think it is time they start winning. And the best way to do that is to work together. Maybe then the conversation won’t be about how a 6.7% tax increase is the fault of council. Maybe then we’ll get a critical analysis of where our money is going and why council is in the position they’re in. Maybe then we’ll start looking at city spending as investments in us.

The Tories doth chirp too much

Once again, a conversation about housing in the Ontario legislature has devolved into a shouting match over anti-Italian sentiment.

As I wrote about in early March, this seems to be the new line of attack for the Tories, who are finding it increasingly difficult to justify their actions on housing in the face of mounting evidence that their plans are a combination of unnecessary, misguided, and actively harmful. The opposition NDP keeps trying to initiate conversations about housing to which the Tories, acting like the most irritating student politicians you had the misfortune of having a poli sci seminar with, keep responding by accusing the New Democrats of having a vendetta against the Italian community.

This is a weak and shameful little play, all in the hopes that they’ll force NDP leader Marit Stiles into a situation where a reporter asks about the Tory accusations and she’s forced to say “I’m not prejudiced against Italians” which becomes a Toronto Star headline that the Tories then use on campaign mailers in the 905. Maybe they’ll find some new line of attack and this will die down, but there’s a good chance this is still an issue by the next election. Which sucks, because it means we aren’t spending time actually talking about housing and how developers are looking to get rich by destroying the Greenbelt.

Costruite case popolari, vigliacchi!

Cool facts for cool people

• The Breach has a really interesting backgrounder on the Hamilton Centre by-election that concluded last week. Something that local media did not mention during the campaign is that third-place PC candidate Pete Wiesner (whose signs still litter the lower city) was one of the police officers to charge our new MPP, Sarah Jama, with assault after he alleged she “ran over his foot” with her wheelchair. “I think the charge itself was egregious. There’s no way that I would have been able to run over his toe. Officers tend to wear steel-toed boots,” Sarah told The Breach. It is hard to get Wiesner’s side of the story, since he rarely interacts with the media, skipped the candidate’s debate, and lives on mostly as a phantom name on signs affixed to vacant used car lots on Kenilworth. Anyway, congrats to Sarah!

• A new Mainstreet poll on the Toronto mayoral by-election is out. It is all-around great news for the leading candidate, Shrug Emoji Person 🤷, who leads the race with 37% support. Trailing the visual manifestation of apathy is former councillor Ana Bailão, pulling in a whopping 14% support. Who does she think she is? Me? Anyway, Bailão is a natural successor to John Tory. She’s an inoffensive centrist with connections to the development and business community, so Bailão would be able to maintain Tory’s middle-of-the-road (read: very pro-business) agenda. Aside from 2022’s distant second-place finisher Gil Peñalosa, there isn’t a strong progressive contender for the seat. Possible progressive candidates like Mike Layton, Joe Cressy, and Bhutila Karpoche have all said they aren’t interested. But nominations don’t even open until April 3rd, so there’s still some time for a strong progressive campaign to boot up…though, any campaign worth anything would have been planning for years already. Which is where Chloe-Marie Brown comes in. The third-place finisher in the 2022 mayoral election who has already announced another mayoral bid, Brown has been working in Toronto politics for some time. Brown served as a staffer for Pam McConnell and ran a shoe-string campaign in 2022 that garnered 34,821 votes, just over 6% of the vote. Now there’s a campaign to watch! Look out, Shrug Emoji Person!

Thanks for reading to the end, friends. Hope you have an awesome first week of spring. See you next week!