Town Hall Engagement an Important Focus in June
It’s been a very busy month of town halls in Ward 2 and across the City.
For those who may have missed the news, 3 town halls were scheduled to take place in June to engage residents on the City’s new encampment protocol, due to come forward in August, on the mountain at the Hill Park Learning Centre on June 19, at the Hamilton Convention Centre on June 28, and at Clappison’s Corners at the Harry Howell Arena on June 29.
I attended the downtown session and I thought City staff did a good job of outlining where we are, how we got here, and the short term tasks ahead. Michelle Baird, the Director of the City’s housing team, was honest when asked difficult questions, admitted when she didn’t know something, and rooted her comments and responses in a human rights based approach to housing and homelessness.
There was speaking time given to housed residents, residents deprived of housing, and homelessness advocates, including a chance to hear some stories about the impacts of this crisis.
A big takeaway from the meeting, for me, was the direct calls, and sometimes shouts, for the City to provide more affordable housing. Even though we were there to primarily talk about a new encampment protocol, the general sentiment was that the City needed to deal with root causes. I’m grateful that so many residents are seeing the upstream causes of homelessness so clearly.
While some appeared to acknowledge that building new housing is a long term plan, they wanted to see more short and medium term solutions put in place. The space that many people identified as a short term solution was the abandoned Sir John A. Macdonald (SJAM) Secondary School in the Central neighbourhood in Ward 2. With acres of land and an unused building, many in the room expressed anger that it continues to sit, unused, during a housing crisis.
They have every right to be angry about it. During the last term of Council, the City was given the opportunity to use some of the vacant SJAM land and building resources for the Hamilton Alliance for Tiny Shelters (HATS) pilot, but turned the school board down, choosing instead to politicize the process of selecting a location, ultimately causing the project to be stalled.
As we learned at the meeting on June 27, the City is now considering using one of the proposed sanctioned encampment sites (locations to be determined in August) for HATS to set up its pilot.
Though it wasn’t discussed at the meeting, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) released a statement the day before the downtown town hall stating “SJAM is not available as a temporary shelter site as HWDSB staff continue to work with the Ministry of Education to explore options for demolition”.
It’s a disappointing decision by the school board, and not one that the City can overrule. The school board, and thus the Province, owns the land. The only option at this point would likely be for the City to negotiate with the Province to secure the use of the site in advance of demolition, as one Ward 2 resident recently suggested.
In addition to the town halls held to engage residents about the encampment response, there was also a Ward 2 Neighbourhood Town Hall held in Corktown at the Church of the Ascension on June 28 at 6:30pm. It was cohosted by the Corktown Neighbourhood Association and was our third town hall this year. I joined about 35 Corktowners to talk through what’s been happening at City Hall, to answer questions and concerns, and to keep opening up space to listen, reflect, and engage.
As I’ve said before, town halls are a new experience for many in Ward 2 and I’m looking forward to seeing how they progress, change, and grow. What’s been obvious to me from those we’ve held already is that residents want to talk and want to be heard. They have questions. They want answers. And I continue to be happy to hold myself accountable to the public.
The next Ward 2 Neighbourhood Town Hall will be at the Central Presbyterian Church on Thursday, September 14 starting at 6:30pm with the Durand Neighbourhood Association’s Annual General Meeting.
Opening up Our Streets Brings the Community Together
This past month saw a major upswing in open streets initiatives in Ward 2, all of which I was happy to support as your City Councillor.
In total, there were 3 initiatives to open up downtown streets and neighbourhoods to allow for more pedestrian and cycling access -
James Street North for the monthly art crawl on June 9
King Street East from John Street to Gage Avenue on June 18
Ferrie Street in the North End for a block party on June 25
James Street North - Monthly Art Crawls
From almost everything I’ve heard, the closure of James Street North during the June 9 art crawl was a huge success. I spoke with vendors, residents, and businesses during, and after the event who told me that it made the event much better, that business was up considerably from comparable art crawls in previous years, and that it was easier and safer to set up as a vendor. Of course, there were some wrinkles, and we’re working on ironing them out over the course of the pilot (which wraps up in August).
The goal for July or August, I’m not sure which yet, is to hopefully open a third section from Barton Street to Murray Street. Opening this third section would make the art crawl event more inclusive and allow for a few planned events to take place on the street. I’m currently diligently working with staff to see if there is enough time, and resources, to implement this and I’ll update folks through our social media once I have more information.
King Street East - Linear Urban Park - Open Streets Hamilton
The closure of King Street East to create a linear urban park was also a huge success - many thousands of Hamiltonians came out to walk, bike, roll, and stroll along the stretch from John Street at Gore Park in the west to Gage Avenue at Gage Park in the east. Many businesses, property owners, and community groups set up tents to offer up information, serve food, or engage with participants. I had a really great time strolling the streets in Wards 2 and 3 with friends and catching up with residents. Everyone was enjoying the good weather and the chance to take up space in our city joyfully.
I’m particularly excited about this event because I think it paves the way for future events of this kind in our city and dovetails nicely with the weekly summer events that are returning traditions in 2023 like Sundays UnLocked in Ward 1, Walk the Block in the North End in Ward 2, and this year’s Open Streets on Barton in Ward 3.
This larger event, which was entirely run and coordinated by the City, demonstrates that we can have much safer and more accessible open spaces for everyone to enjoy. It also centres downtown and the lower city as destinations for community resiliency, vibrancy, and fun. I hope we will make it an annual event that continues to grow.
Ferrie Street - North End Neighbourhood Block Party
Though it was an unexpected request, I was thrilled to be able to support a neighbourhood block party in the North End over the weekend. Simply put, we need more events like this in our neighbourhoods right now as we continue to evaluate how we share space with one another and come together in a pandemic world.
The impetus for this event came from the neighbourhood and they reached out, almost immediately, to ask for some support when they learned how high the fees would be to close down the streets on their own.
The cost, likely in the hundreds of dollars, possibly thousands when it’s all said and done, would have come right from neighbours’ pockets. The fees wouldn’t have been used to run the block party, but just to close the street down for the afternoon and early evening (the event ran from noon to 8pm).
From what I saw posted on social media, the event was full of laughter, singing, dancing, and even an appearance by the legendary BA Johnston. The reason I invested funding from Ward 2 in this event was because it wasn’t possible for the City to change its policies or fee structures in the short term (but the medium to long term plan is to look at doing that). At present, the City’s policies and fee structures mean it’s more expensive to close the street down for a block party in Hamilton than to do the same thing in Toronto. Not great.
If we want to make our streets and neighbourhoods safer, more inclusive, and help our communities to thrive, we have to do everything we can as a City to enable organizations, neighbours, and the City itself, to much more easily and affordably make space, including on our streets. I plan to support future changes to do just that and will keep you posted as our fees and policies change.
What it Takes to Implement Neighbourhood Safety
The Ward 2 Team has spent a considerable amount of time mapping new garbage can locations and spots where we need to improve street safety. It’s the beginning of a long and often arduous process to turn a resident request into a successful intervention.
The 2 examples I provided, installing a ready made thing like a garbage can, and designing a street safety intervention, go through similar processes at the City and I thought it important to shed some light on what happens behind the scenes.
In both scenarios, we have to start with either a motion at a Committee or Council meeting or a line item added to a future annual operating budget. A motion is sometimes quicker in terms of getting the ball rolling if there’s area rating money available to do something, which is why you’ll notice that I’ve put a number of motions forward in this term of Council. But before a motion can even be put forward, a set of priorities have to determined by mapping out areas of concern (at least that’s how we’re doing it in the Ward 2 office).
Because I started the term without any files or documents that outlined priorities or resident concerns, I’ve had to compile these priorities both by listening closely to residents and working with priorities that City staff had already established. Thankfully, residents haven’t been shy about letting us know where they see obvious safety concerns.
Once that first step is taken, there are many more to go through before installation or implementation can take place -
Funding approval at either the Council or staff level - this only works if the funding is already in place, meaning that it was approved in the most recent budget or if there is sufficient area rating funding available (if not, it must wait until the next budget process starts); funding approval sometimes includes future staffing to support the ongoing maintenance of infrastructure projects
Adding the work to City staff workplans - every department and division at the City has workplans and those workplans are broken down to staff groups or sometimes individual staff; this requires not only the addition of the project to existing staff workplans but ensuring that there are staff in place to support and maintain the implementation going forward - there’s no point in installing flowers in a boulevard planter box if there’s no one from staff assigned to maintain the flowers year after year (it has not always been the City’s practice to do this, but we’re working to ensure it’s in place moving forward)
Putting out a request for proposal (RFP), interest (RFI), or quotation (RFQ) - once the right staff group or individual has been assigned the work, they have to put it out to tender through either an RFP, RFI, or RFQ; this process can be abbreviated if we already have an approved vendor (like in the case of procuring garbage cans)
Scheduling the work - This requires working with the successful bidder to deliver and install something or define a construction schedule; the schedules are usually approximate in nature, down to the month or week, and confirmed based on when the bidder is either starting or finishing other work (sometimes in other municipalities or for other clients)
Doing the work - Either installing the goods delivered, like garbage cans, or performing the construction work necessary to implement a safety improvement, like the planter box in the photo above
Checking the work - Once the work is completed, almost always under a contract or warranty provision, it’s up to the City to check that the work has been done satisfactorily and meets any agreements or contract standards
I hope this helps to paint a bit of a picture of how many of the planned neighbourhood improvements work, how the City and Ward 2 office work together, and why it can sometimes take a while until you see an improvement implemented. We’re working on trying to accelerate some of the requested neighbourhood improvements that residents have asked for, but have to follow this process (or a similar one) in order to make sure things are done properly.
Supporting Innovative Housing Models is the Way Forward
You’ve likely seen the many new articles and media reports on the City’s initiative to support the new non-profit housing co-operative that was started at 272 Caroline Street South. I posted on social media about the motion I put forward and thought it was important to unpack why I made the decision to commit $84,000 of Ward 2 funding to this project.
If you’re not familiar with the idea of a non-profit housing co-operative, let me break it down for you -
The people who live in the building are the members of the co-op
The members do a bunch of things, but mainly they elect a board and set policies
The board runs the co-op
Members don’t own individual units
This means that by contributing this $84k, about 1-2% of the total costs, we will be able to retain 21 units of affordable housing. To build or purchase those 21 units would cost millions of dollars. By the co-op itself making the purchase with the City’s support, we’re leveraging existing funding including existing City programs, and adding to funding from the Hamilton Community Foundation, the Golden Horseshoe Co-Operative Housing Federation, and others to make this happen.
While it’s not possible to scale this up indefinitely and area rating is not a sustainable source of funding in the long term, this is an important first step to add to the much-needed affordable housing supply in Hamilton. As Hamiltonians know, the housing market has made it nearly impossible to maintain any kind of housing affordability in our city. This won’t solve that problem, but it contributes to the solution and I appreciate the unanimous support from my colleagues to embark on this innovative approach.
I also think it’s important to highlight the work that the tenants did to make this happen. When they heard that their building was up for sale they immediately saw this as an opportunity to not only keep the rents affordable but to have some autonomy over how their building is managed. They organized, reached out to a variety of funders, raised money, asked the City for help, and are in the process of negotiating the sale with the owner.
As a result of their work, the City’s housing staff, through the Housing Sustainability Investment Roadmap, will be developing policy to help others who wish to start non-profit housing co-operatives. This is exactly the kind of thing that we should be supporting at the municipal level and it’s by doing this work with and in communities that we will achieve the best results for our city.
Upcoming Events and City Notices
For a list of City Notices directly impacting Ward 2, including encroachment applications, temporary road closures, and watermain repairs, visit our website.
Hamilton Fringe - The annual festival of theatre and performances takes place from July 19 to 30 in various venues and outdoor spaces downtown including The Cannon, Democracy, Emerald Coffee, Mulberry Coffeehouse, Paisley Coffeehouse, Playhouse Cinema, Redchurch Cafe + Gallery, Relay Coffee, Tourism Hamilton, and Vintage Coffee Roasters.
Mid-summer Poetry Slam - On Thursday, July 20, at 6:00pm join the slam in the Pavilion and Sculpture Garden. There will be light refreshments, an open mic, and a poetry slam. All poets will earn points to qualify for the semi-finals.
Hamilton Glowride - The Hamilton Glowriders will be heading out from Corktown Park on Saturday, July 22 at 8:00pm.
Salsa on the Waterfront - The return of this very popular event is back in July on the waterfront in Ward 2. It kicks off on Tuesday, July 4 and will take place every Tuesday evening in July and August throughout the summer. There will be a special Saturday night edition at the Pier on July 22 followed by an after party at Leaner Hall.
Tenant Organizer Training Workshop - A free tenant organizer training workshop for tenants in the Gibson, Landsdale, Stipley, and Crown Point neighbourhoods put on by the Hamilton Community Land Trust. Childcare will be provided.
Updates from the Last Issue of the Ward 2 Newsletter
This section provides updates on things I wrote about in the last issue of the newsletter. The article names are the same, including links, so it’s easier to keep track of what’s new.
Appeal of Jamesville Affordable Housing Project Lingers
The appeal of the Jamesville affordable housing project continues, unfortunately, but as of June 29 the parties have secured a mediator and will meet on a confidential basis in order to resolve the appeal. As reported by Joey Coleman at The Public Record, who was able to watch the hearing, “The Ontario Land Tribunal says the City of Hamilton and CN Rail will conduct confidential mediation talks during July and August in the hope of reaching a settlement to allow the construction of housing at the Jamesville site at 405 James Street North”. I will keep everyone updated through social media as I learn more.