In this city-run seniors' building, Hamilton residents say needles, urine, feces are only steps away

When Rose Hamilton stepped into the stairwell of her apartment building one evening in January, it wasn’t the first time she says she encountered a puddle of urine and feces.

The spry 68-year-old leads Senior Watch — a one-of-a-kind program in First Place, a CityHousing Hamilton (CHH) building where volunteers check every morning and night on about two dozen residents.

Up until Jan. 6, as part of the program, Rose used the stairs to quickly go from unit to unit in the 22-storey building geared, for the most part, to lower-income seniors. 

In the stairwells, she said, she’s seen it all — needles, pipes, blood, vomit, spilled food and drinks, garbage and the remnants of fires, many of which CBC Hamilton also saw during a recent tour. Rose said she reports these issues to management, but they're often not cleaned up for days or weeks.

So that evening, almost stepping in the excrement on the eleventh-floor landing was the “cherry on top” that pushed her to take drastic action, she said. 

She emailed city staff — CHH buildings are subsidized and managed by the city — to let them know Senior Watch would be put on hold indefinitely. 

“I feel terrible about the tenants involved in the program that depend on it,” Rose wrote. “But I cannot continue, nor ask my volunteers to continue, walking these halls and stairwells.”

Her decision wasn’t made lightly, she said in an interview. 

Senior Watch had run previously, but Rose restarted it last spring after the program paused at the start of the pandemic.

She knew it was needed after several people on her floor died in their units within a year. They seemingly remained in their units until even Rose smelled a “very distinctive” odour seeping into the hallway, she said.

“I thought to myself, I’m alone. How sad is it that they were dead in their apartment and people only knew because of the smell?” 

Since revamping it, residents now hang a sign on their door before bed and then take it down in the morning to indicate to volunteers they’re OK. 

If a volunteer is concerned, they knock on the resident’s door. If there’s no answer, Rose calls their emergency contacts and checks hospitals. As a last resort, she asks police to do a wellness check.

Worried about the impacts of cancelling Senior Watch, city staff found a solution this month, Rose said. She now has permission to put the elevator in service mode — so no one else uses it — during her evening checks. That ensures she moves efficiently and doesn’t have to go into the stairwells.