Before signing your lease, make sure to read the fine print on the people you may be living with
Aside from obtaining a higher education through post-secondary institutions, university can be considered to be a time when students gain their independence - especially if they were to move out of their childhood home.
The adult responsibilities of grocery shopping and doing your own laundry finally begin, and we aren't able to rely on our parents anymore. Moving away from home also creates opportunities for character-building as students may need to live with a variety of individuals who may be unfamiliar to them.
With many student leases coming to an end and house-hunting season in full swing, it's no surprise that many of us may be reflecting on our prior housemate experience.
Whether it's your first time house-hunting as a student or your last, it's important to know that the people you will be sharing a home with have the power to make you feel part of a second family, or despise every moment of your academic year.
Don't get me wrong, not all housemates make there are always positive moments with housemates that can overshadow the annoyance you experience. Yes, you may fight about them always stealing your food, even when you write your name on the container. However, at the end of the day, when they need advice, you're always more than happy to talk with them about whatever troubles you.
I would say these are the best kinds of housemates. Although you may have to remind each other to take your laundry out of the dryer machine because it's been sitting there for a few days, they are motivational and comforting. These types of housemates make you miss home a little less.
On the other hand, we have the housemates that make you regret moving to a post-secondary institution so far from home.
Although no one intends to be an unfavourable housemate, we don't always get along with everyone we meet.
At such a diverse university, it's no surprise that our housemates were raised differently from us.
However, this often leads to conflict within the house. Someone may have to pick up the slack or provide constant reminders for everyone to pull their weight within their house. There may be an unfair division of household chores or overall your personalities don't match causing other lifestyle conflicts.
It's not favourable to live with people who you cannot agree with on simple things such as buying house supplies or are inconsiderate of your preferences like being excessively loud or passive-aggressive in the house group chat.
Elements such as these can break your university experience because you become miserable within a space where you are spending the majority of your time. The energy should be welcoming. You shouldn't be mentally exhausted anytime you think of heading back to your room. By experiencing these negative feelings, we begin to associate school with the unpleasant situations we constantly experience with our housemates.
Overall, we either get really lucky when gambling for housemates or we get placed into situations that make us regret moving out of our childhood homes.
Although I don't think there's a way we can avoid this completely, there are some preventative measures we can take to avoid this even before the lease is signed.
For example, creating a group of people to rent an entire house with you rather than looking to rent a room for yourself alone ensures that you personally know your future housemates. This can help avoid conflict as you may have better insight into their personality, lifestyle and their living preferences. If this doesn't work for you, you could also look for parts of houses to rent like the basement where you would only need to convince one other friend to move in with you.
It is very important to know who you are living with before you sign the lease.
In the event that you are living with random people, set house rules that accommodate everyone's lifestyle in some capacity and remember to hold mutual respect. At the end of the day, you are tied together by a lease. If this still doesn't work, find some trusted friends to laugh about these issues with and think about seeking other alternative living solutions next year.
The victims of scams, cutthroat competition and more scams – students need better support navigating the housing crisis
With the brutal race to find listings, equally intense bidding wars and scams everywhere, McMaster University students continue to face unrelenting obstacles in attaining off-campus housing this year. And they need support – support that the university is failing to provide.
Fuelled by the impacts of the pandemic, the shortage of on- and off-campus housing and the rapidly growing number of McMaster students, affordable housing has evolved into a luxury that few are fortunate to find. While the Hamilton housing crisis may seem like a simple supply and demand issue at first glance, the unstable rental market poses unique challenges for different groups of Students.
International and out-of-province students, for one, are faced with difficulties when trying to arrange their accommodation from a different country or province. Being unable to view listings and meet with landlords in person only makes them more vulnerable to scams and difficult landlords. On top of that, McMaster’s own off-campus housing website does not screen listings and fails to protect students from scams.
International and out-of-province students, for one, are faced with difficulties when trying to arrange their accommodation from a different country or province. Being unable to view listings and meet with landlords in person only makes them more vulnerable to scams and difficult landlords.
Male students are also overlooked in the housing crisis. Though advertising for female-only housing tends to be abundant in Facebook groups and other listing websites, male and co-ed student housing is scarce. Even on McMaster’s off-campus housing website, which features co-ed residences, a majority of the listings are over a thousand dollars per room, rendering the homes unaffordable for many students.
And let’s not forget the incoming first-year students who are waitlisted for residence at McMaster due to the limited availability of rooms and competitive eligibility criteria based on academic achievement. Not only are these students inexperienced, but they also lack the advantage of starting their search earlier in the school year since residence applications take place in June. Without sufficient time and resources provided by McMaster, incoming students are forced to fight for the last few available rentals.
And let’s not forget the incoming first-year students who are waitlisted for residence at McMaster due to the limited availability of rooms and competitive eligibility criteria based on academic achievement.
As many McMaster students have yet to secure affordable, safe and convenient housing, they face a year of uncertainty.
Some students may need to make a commute worth hours or exceed their budgets to afford a sub-par room near campus, while others with limited financial flexibility and fortune are on the verge of homelessness. The sheer infeasibility and severity of current circumstances could even push some students to consider dropping out this year.
To make matters worse, the period of economic inflation continues to put a strain on students. It also doesn’t help that McMaster’s bursary applications close during the winter term. The uncertainty of being accepted for funding and ill-timed disbursement doesn’t allow students to plan their finances for the academic year.
Though McMaster is working to create more residences, there is a need for unique short-term solutions to address the current state of the crisis.
McMaster must recognize that the Hamilton housing crisis is about much more than housing.
From the search for housing to life in their new homes, the crisis has taken a significant physical and mental toll on students, putting their success and well-being at stake. The stress of managing finances, employment, commuting, school and poor housing conditions, such as overcrowding, is draining students across the country.
Students should not have to think twice about purchasing a meal or saving up for next month’s rent. They should not have to compromise their own well-being or academic success because of unaffordable housing. McMaster and other post-secondary institutions need to do better.
I have a theory that there is a ghost in the house I grew up in. It’s not a scary ghost that lives to haunt, but a benevolent entity that loves to play tricks. My house ghost has a penchant for stealing, making you wonder how the object you had on your person mere seconds ago has somehow vanished. The items always turned up later, underneath couches or beds.
I just moved out of my childhood home in Mississauga and left my ghost behind. A few weeks ago, it stole one of my slippers and I couldn’t help but think that the ghost wanted to keep a piece of me. Because as much as that house built me, my family built that house.
I have been thinking a lot about the meaning of home. Not only because I left the one I grew up in, but also because I have lived more places in the last year than I have in the previous decade. I lived in Edwards Hall in my first year and have spent the school year in a student house. I have wrestled with the question of where to call my home base. Is it the place where I spend the majority of my nights? The place where the people I love the most are? The place that challenges me? The place that comforts me?
My adulthood up until this point has been the loss of constants. Schedules that change from week to week. Different places to lay my head. I feel nomadic sometimes, always living half in and out of a suitcase. I’m always leaving somewhere soon, whether by the end of the day, week, month or year.
I am picky about what I call “home.” I don’t like to say “let’s go home” on vacation because we’re returning to a generic hotel room, not a place where I have grown and changed. I called Edwards Hall “Eddy” instead of home. I call my student house “the house.” But I’ve been thinking lately that maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I don’t need to discriminate between homes and houses, because even if a place doesn’t change me, I changed it.
Shortly before I moved out of Edwards Hall, I discovered the names of past residents written on the wall above the bed. Before I left, I added my name. I forgot my over-the-door hook in the room and now someone else probably uses it.
And there are others that left a mark. The residents that wrote “Traphouse 5” under the room number. Whoever broke my closet hook. The people whose push pins left holes in the corkboard. Those responsible for the nicks in the desk.
We leave marks wherever we go. My housemates and I turned a trashed student house into a semblance of a cozy space. When I leave my room, I might leave the curtains behind, or at least the rod. I am the person who chose pink for the walls.
In my childhood home, we left marks too. I made the hole in the basement wall. We changed flooring and light switches, put in shelving and backsplash and bushes. We tore out all the grass on the property. My father built the deck. My mother picked the bright colours with which she painted the walls. Despite the repaint, you could still see the reds and yellows where the ceiling meets the wall.
But I think there are other, invisible ways that we change the spaces we occupy. There is a legacy that we leave with the way we moved, the way we loved, the way we hated. Maybe the friendship that my roommate and I formed in Edwards Hall blessed this year’s occupants. Maybe the laughter of my housemates and I will echo there when we’re gone. Maybe my family’s undying love for one another will make my childhood home a happy one for the young family that moved in.
I would be naïve to exclude the bad. Maybe unkind words whispered behind backs, fights, disagreements, lack of communication — maybe that strains a home, makes it weary and old. Maybe the tears shed when hearts are heavy makes the roof sag. Maybe the lives mourned makes the floors creak.
However, it is more than just houses. It is streets and cities. The wear on the sidewalks from all the times my sister and I walked to 7-11 for Slurpees. The words swirling in the air as I wrote bad poetry at my elementary school bus stop. My fingerprints on the Mississauga city buses I don’t ride anymore. The pennies I’ve thrown in mall fountains. Our memories change spaces.
I have spent the last seven months writing about the artists, entrepreneurs and activists in Hamilton. Before I got to do this work, I would have never even suggested that Hamilton was home. But now I know its art and its culture. Now that I have left a record that won’t be erased, I would be remiss to say it isn’t a home.
Even when I graduate and don’t have to be in Hamilton, I’ll come back. To grab a patty from Jamaican Patty Shack, for a tarot reading at Witch’s Fix, or to attend a Denoire Collective event.
When the year begins, we talk a lot about how McMaster and Hamilton will become home for us over time. For some people, that is true and for others, it is not. But if you want to claim this campus or this city as your own, know that it’s yours. You changed it because you were here.
As the school year comes to a close, many of us will be leaving places; our residences, our student houses, our campus, this city. Our childhood homes for smaller homes, our permanent houses for hotel rooms. In transit, it is easy to feel like you have no base, no where that you belong to. But the ghosts that keep parts of you will remember you were there.
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For over 25 years the McMaster Alumni Association has partnered with affinity companies to bring valuable services and discounted benefits to students, alumni as well as faculty and staff. If you’re a student, you may have encountered some friendly folks reaching out to you to sign up for a BMO McMaster MasterCard in the Student Centre. And perhaps you might have looked into renters insurance in your second year when you moved off campus through TD Insurance Meloche Monnex. We hope you’ve enjoyed flashing your MasterCard with the image of our beloved Edwards Arch and felt a little surge of pride when a cashier or server comments on the great looking card, or says, oh, hey, I go to MAC too! Perhaps when you graduate, you’ll need to replace your health and dental insurance and will look to Manulife Financial for that. Further on, you’ll switch that renters insurance to house insurance and may want to protect your growing family with life insurance. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves!
The MAA’s goal with the affinity programs has always been to offer a great deal or added value on a service or product you need. And, over the years, thousands of students and alumni have participated in these programs. With excellent customer service survey reports and impressive retention rates, we are confident that the programs are delivering the quality experience that we expect.
You may wonder what else the alumni association get out of these programs. You may enjoy knowing that your participation in these programs helps to contribute to programs and initiatives back here at MAC, without any additional cost to you! Over the years, through growth in these programs, the MAA has supported student bursaries and scholarships, helped fund Alumni Field, the McMaster University Student Centre, helped bring you Light up the Night, as well as countless student group initiatives, conferences and events that contribute to the diverse learning and social opportunities that make for an awesome university experience.
So, if you’re carrying that McMaster MasterCard in your wallet, we hope you feel good about using it and we hope you are even more stoked about the discount you received on your insurance. If you’d like to learn more about the affinity programs offered through the association, check us out anytime at alumni.mcmaster.ca – Access Benefits. Questions? Contact [email protected] or call 905-525-9140, x. 23900. And hey, thanks for your participation!
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By: Tanya Kett & Jillian Perkins Marsh
Some say that when they last attended a job fair employers told them to apply online, so they felt it was pointless to attend. If you have similar sentiments, I urge you to keep reading.
Employers may tell you to apply online (it does save paper!), but the real reason they are there is to get a sense of the person behind the resume that is submitted online — YOU.
Who are you? What do you have to offer? Why are you unique? Are you personable? Do you seem genuinely interested? What do you know about them? Answers to these questions can only be conveyed in an application to a certain extent. Make a real connection so that when your application does come across their desk, your name gets noticed.
How can you differentiate your application from other ones in the application pile?
Do your research. Explore the event website for the list of employers confirmed to attend and do some research on them before the event.
Tailor your elevator pitch. Make eye contact and shake their hand. Be bold, assertive, and with some confidence, introduce yourself. Tell them what you do or want to do, what you have to offer and why you are interested in them. Customize your pitch based on your research.
Ask useful questions. Based on your research, prepare some thoughtful questions to generate conversation after your introductions.
Be an active listener. Really listen to what they have to say; it is easy to start thinking ahead to what you will say next, but concentrate on being in the moment. After the conversation is over, jot down any suggestions they had for applicants before you forget.
Be ready to dig deeper. If you encounter an organization of interest that is not hiring in the area you are interested in, don’t despair. Remember that organizations recruit for many diverse roles and hiring timelines are often not predictable.
Invite to connect on LinkedIn. Visit your new contact’s profile and send your request from there, so you have an option to ‘Add a Note.’ Reference something from your conversation when you invite them to connect and thank them for their time in speaking with you at the event.
After you attend the event and employ the tactics above, you are ready to submit that online application. Don’t forget to mention the contact you spoke with at the Career Fair or Company Recruitment Event. Incorporate their suggestions and offer something you learned from them in your cover letter as part of why you are interested in applying.
Now imagine you did none of the above, just attended, had a few conversations and just applied online. Which application would you be most interested in?
Use what you’ve learned in this article at our SCENE networking night on March 21. This event is open to McMaster alumni and students in their final year. Register here: alumni.mcmaster.ca under Event Listings.
Read the full article on our Medium page.
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Finding off-campus housing can be a stressful experience for McMaster students for a variety of reasons, and it does not look like that will change anytime soon. With the increased number of students enrolled at the university, off-campus housing is becoming harder to find.
According to McMaster University official statistics, more than 27,000 full-time undergraduate students are enrolled at the university this year, a figure 20 per cent higher than the 22,558 undergrad students enrolled five years ago.
According to Andrew Parashis, a property manager at Spotted Properties, the largest property management in the McMaster community, the student housing supply has not been able to keep up with the rising demand.
The number of students seeking housing through Spotted Properties has tripled over the past year, easily surpassing the number of new properties the company has taken on.
“With McMaster taking on so many people, there are a lot of people saying they can’t find a house,” Parashis said.
Much of the increase in demand can be attributed to the increase in international students, who Spotted Properties work with regularly.
In 2014-2015, McMaster had 1,499 full-time international undergraduates. This year, that number has doubled.
According to Parashis, another contributing factor this year is the higher number of first year students that have come to Spotted Properties to find accommodation.
McMaster currently cannot accommodate all first-years in residence. Instead, only incoming first-years with an average of 83.5 per cent or higher are guaranteed residence placement.
To accommodate incoming students, the university is developing two new residences: the Peter George Living and Learning Centre, slated to open this fall, and an off-campus residence, scheduled for August 2021.
Yet, with the Peter George Living and Learning Centre adding only 500 beds, some first-year students will likely still have to find non-residence accommodations next year.
One of the byproducts of increased housing demand is higher prices.
“We’re renting houses out for an average of $550 dollars right now,” Parashis said. “Our most expensive places are about $700 a room, which is very high. The problem is there’s such a lack of good quality homes, so it allows landlords to demand high prices if they offer premium product.”
Students are also forced to live further from McMaster.
“We have people going as far as Dundurn to rent,” said Parashis.
These issues are compounded by existing problems in the student housing industry, such as pervasive landlord discrimination.
"Many landlords have negative stereotypes of people and have made judgement based on race, gender and even university program, which isn't fair,” said Parashis.
These biases make it frustrating for students, who are often not given an equal chance at securing a house.
An especially frustrating situation can occur when landlords break an agreement with students before a contract is signed or a payment is made.
Parashis says students independently negotiating with landlords are susceptible to this problem, leading them to employ companies like Spotted Properties, which use a standardized transaction process.
Spotted Properties, which is run by former McMaster students, is working to address these issues by ensuring contracts and policies align with current best practice guidelines and providing 24/7 service to tenants.
In addition, the company is working closely with agencies abroad to reserve homes for international students at the university.
The McMaster Students Union has also been working to improve students’ experiences with off-campus housing, pushing the city of Hamilton to go forward with a landlord licensing pilot project.
The MSU municipal affairs committee also launched a landlord rating website in January.
Despite these efforts, student housing issues are many, and the solutions remain unclear. Addressing them will likely require concerted efforts from all parties involved.
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By: Jennifer La Grassa
Searching for a decent student house to live in within the McMaster area is like searching for a needle in a haystack — you’ll simply never find it, or by the time you do it turns out that the needle belongs to someone else. Most of the student-rented houses in Hamilton have unmaintained, cookie cutter interiors that attempt to cram eight to ten students in what should comfortably fit four people at most. A prominent issue among most of the student-rented houses is that they’re old and poorly maintained. Most of them seem just about ready to collapse in on themselves and appear more run-down than they should. As a landlord, if you don’t have the money or the time to upkeep the houses that you rent, then you shouldn’t be in the business. Being a post-secondary student that lives away from home is stressful enough, let alone having to live in a house that feels like the farthest thing from a “home.”
If health and safety officials were to actually take the time to inspect all the houses that students are presented to live in, the majority of them would have to undergo serious renovations. Safety features such as smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, a ventilation fan above the stove, and proper locks on the front door are rare to come across. Another alarming commonality among houses are those whose front and back doors open up into a bedroom. Tenants shouldn’t fall asleep at night fearing that someone will knock on their front door or break into their bedroom. As for basement rooms, if there isn’t a standardized window and properly insulated walls, no human being should be expected to actually rent it. I realize the goal of a landlord may simply be to maximize their profit, but they need to stop building bedrooms out of living spaces.
During my house-hunting adventures at the beginning of this year, landlords kept insisting that their house would “go fast” and attempted to rush my housemates and me into a decision. If it’s three weeks into the New Year and your house is still on the market, then it clearly hasn’t gone fast and in that case others might be seeing an issue that we have overlooked. Another landlord requested that we make her “an offer” on the rent of the house. Remarks such as these that make me feel like landlords believe they can take advantage of students by making them bargain for the rental of a subpar house.
Just because we’re students doesn’t mean that we don’t deserve a decent place to live in. I strongly feel that if funds were available, the McMaster Off-Campus Resource Centre should expand and work with city officials and the university to better the housing options presented to students. Having more apartment buildings near campus that could house students or even just enhancing the ways in which student houses are managed would both be ideal solutions. These could encourage more students to live away from home and help those that have to live away feel more comfortable with their new surroundings.
Your horror stories (as gathered from a public Silhouette poll)
“My friends and I were house hunting last January...One of the houses we looked at literally looked like a murder could have taken place there. The house was pretty dark and the landlord seemed persistent about so many things. At the end of the tour, we told him we would get back to him about the house since we were looking for an eight month lease rather than 12 months like he was asking for. It was actually scary how demanding and annoying he was being about how he didn’t want to wait and how quickly he would be able to get documents ready.”
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“Landlord finished the tour of the house with “and here’s where my mother died,” then proceeded to stare into my very soul for a good minute and a half. I excused myself and said I needed to look at a few more places that day; she replied with a frown and said that she wished that young adults were more respectful these days while slamming the door in my face.”
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“Pretty sure we saw a crack pipe casually lying on the kitchen counter at a six-bedroom house on Stroud.”
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“One of the first houses I ever saw during my house hunting experience is one that [still] scars me...In order to enter the hobbit hole bedroom you had to crouch through a narrow hallway until you made your way into a tiny room that barely held a bed and a desk. I think Harry Potter had a better crib than that!”
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“ When we toured [the apartment], everything seemed fine -- it was clean, well-lit, no visible signs of infestation. When we moved our things in in August, the super told us that the previous tenants had ripped the baseboards out, then gave me a roach motel and left. That night, it became apparent that they’d ripped up the baseboards to try and get at the roach nests – the apartment was infested, and they were crawling behind and beneath every surface. There was a hole in the bathroom tile that went to the outside, taped over with a tarp-- we were on the 11th floor! We ended up breaking our lease and moving to another apartment, but six months on I still break into a cold sweat when I see a shadow or a bit of fluff from the corner of my eye and mistake it for a roach. 0/10 do not recommend.”
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“ HOUSE WAS SH!T.”
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Photo Credit: Kevin Bauman
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A little over three years ago, I excitedly moved into my student house. I predicted it would soon become the backdrop of my soon-to-be reality TV-worthy student life, but instead I was welcomed into my new home with a slew of landlord upsets. With everything from bathroom leaks, to broken decks, to a mysterious older man who used to enter our home at night to fix the plumbing (yes, this was as terrifying as it sounds), at times my student house was more of a problem than a personal oasis.
At the time, I didn’t realize that all of these issues were at the fault of my landlord, since he often asserted his authority in a way that made myself and my housemates feel responsible.
We are definitely not the only students to be in a situation like this. Tenants of Westdale and Ainsliewood homes have often fallen victim to landlord traps that place them in uncomfortable and unlawful positions. In an effort to combat this problem, the MSU’s Student Community Support Network has launched the #MacLivesHere campaign, a Twitter and recently MUSC-centric campaign that will help students become better acquainted with leasing homes and give them an opportunity to share their grievances.
The #MacLivesHere campaign is, in theory, a great idea. So many students get into signing leases without knowing all their rights, and this has led to complications in the past where students end up getting the short end of a deal that is supposed to be in their favour.
The only unfortunate part of the campaign is that it is run by a somewhat overshadowed MSU service, the SCSN.
The MSU is a big organization. It is comprised of both large and small services, with some getting more attention than others. This structure is something expected, but it also begs the question, how necessary are all of our services, and can our money be better used serving groups with the power to make campaigns noticed and accessible?
The SCSN is a service that is meant to help students build positive relationships with the Hamilton community. Unfortunately, even though their aim is noble, some of their efforts and campaigns often get overlooked when larger groups take center stage. It could be a valuable and well-used service for students, but when larger promotions sidestep its actions, the group just appears to be another accessory of the MSU that helps keen students piggyback on a service to work their way towards a future full-time job with the Union.
As a person who is more informed about campus events and services than most, I still don’t know all that much about the SCSN. It is one of multiple MSU services that passes just enough under the radar that very few seem to be checking up on them — this is a disservice both to them and the student body.
Perhaps its time to take a good look at our services and decide which ones are worth our time, and figure out how we can better use our resources to make those shine. It would be great to see more students exposed to the Mac Lives Here campaign, but as far as many students are concerned, SCSN hasn’t even signed a lease.
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