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.

CHH says cleaning done regularly

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. 

But she said the core problem isn’t being addressed — the lack of maintenance and cleaning in a building with conditions deteriorating steadily since this fall. 

Rose now calls First Place, “Last Place,” as she no longer wants to live there, but can’t find an affordable alternative.

Adam Sweedland, CHH’s chief executive officer, said changes were made to the organization in October 2025 “to better serve tenants, which includes enhancements to cleaning services.” 

“We remain committed to being responsive to concerns with our primary focus on the health and safety of all tenants,” he said in an emailed statement.

He said stairwells are inspected daily and cleaned throughout the week. There’s two full-time cleaners at First Place, plus a third twice weekly. 

When CBC Hamilton visited the building earlier this month, a person was seen cleaning the floors in one hallway.

‘Totally disgusting’

But Rose and fellow resident and Senior Watch volunteer Brenda Hind, 58, said they haven’t seen improvements. They’ve been consistently reporting their concerns to the building’s management and city staff. 

Only sometimes do they hear back, they said, and when they do, it takes days for the issue — such as blood on the hallway floor — to be addressed.

“We’re the two troublemakers in the building,” said Hind. “I care about everything [here] and the people, so that’s why I have a big mouth and I’m not scared of anything.” 

Hind, who works as a school bus driver and has lived in city shelters before First Place, has tried cleaning up what appears to be dog pee in the hallways herself. But she’d always find more the next day and has mostly given up. 

“I’ve asked the cleaners to clean the trim because it’s so caked in piss,” Hind said. “They won’t do it. They say, ‘It’s not our job.’”

WATCH | Hind gives a tour of First Place in downtown Hamilton:

What Hind hasn’t given up on is picking up needles and other drug paraphernalia she finds littered in the stairwells. 

In one week, she said, she filled two sharp bins, which she showed to CBC. 

“It’s totally disgusting,” Hind said. “That’s why we scream so much about it.”

Residents advised not to pick up needles 

Sweedland said building maintenance staff don’t pick up sharps and drug paraphernalia. Instead other “trained staff” do it while wearing personal protective equipment. 

He urged residents to not pick these items up themselves, but instead report finding anything. 

CHH is trying to stop people from entering First Place who don’t live there, Sweedland said. 

There are more security patrols outside and throughout the stairwells, and they’re changing the number of entrances, adding fencing and upgrading key scans and locks, he said. 

On the tour of First Place earlier this month, Hind showed CBC a side entrance that appeared to have recently been broken into. Personal belongings, food, needles and waste were scattered across the hallway leading to other parts of the building.

Hind called security to report the issue. After she hung up, she told CBC she hoped help was on the way.