The story was updated on Dec. 4 at 12:17 p.m.
Residents of An Clachan remain uncertain about the future of their housing at Queen’s.
At an SGPS Council meeting on Oct. 24 it was revealed An Clachan, a Queen’s community housing building predominantly housing graduate students and their families, is set to be renovated and replaced by a higher-density floor plan. The information was made public to An Clachan tenants on Nov. 23. The updates include new lease renewal limits, rent increases, and other changes, according to an email sent to An Clachan residents which was obtained by The Journal.
“Residents, people affected directly by all those changes, had been kept in the dark,” Justyna Szewczyk-El Jassem, president of PSAC 901, said in an interview with The Journal.
PSAC 901 is the union representing teaching assistants and post-doctoral scholars at Queen’s University. Beginning in 2024, Community Housing will be raising rent by an unknown amount exceeding the provincial annual guideline, according to the email received by residents.
“Due to mounting operational costs, and the need for significant facilities reinvestment, Community Housing will be increasing rent by more than the provincial annual guideline amount, beginning in 2024,” the email to An Clachan residents read.
An Clachan residents are demanding clearer communication from Queen’s and why the rent increases will be unit-specific and not a blanket increase for all residents, graduate student and PSAC 901 member Taylor* told The Journal. Residents hope to discuss the redevelopment and encourage the University to reconsider.Residents are unclear what the University intends as the outcome of these changes.
“One of the primary things we’re asking for is for the University to communicate, literally anything to us at any time,” Taylor said. “We know they’re intending to raise our rent past the provincial minimums, we do not know how much that is. They refuse to tell us this information.”
Effective February 2024, rent for An Clachan residents will range from $826 to $1,258 monthly. The rent includes heat, water and electricity, and is dependent on the unit’s furnishings and number of bedrooms.
The email included an update to a new policy for lease renewal to align with students’ program duration. The updated policy ensures the maximum number of students have access to housing, the email said. The policy changes, including those regarding rent increases will impact residents at John Orr alongside An Clachan.
According to the Community Housing website, the University is exempt from following provincially-mandated annual increases. Rent increases over the past few years have increased in accordance with the provincially-mandated guidelines.
Taylor explained that while PhD students are expected to finish their degree in four years, it doesn’t happen for many students.
“It’s not going to happen in that time for most people. What are people supposed to do when your funding from the University ends […] you’re losing your payment, your funding, and you’re being kicked out of your house. I don’t really know why they think that’s appropriate,” Taylor said.
Queen’s is in the early stages of planning the redevelopment of the An Clachan Housing Complex and it will be years before construction begins, the University wrote in a statement to The Journal.
“A preliminary study has confirmed the potential for significantly more housing units at the site, which will increase Queen’s-owned housing access for graduate and professional students,” the statement said.
The University has yet to provide details to residents about the changes to their rent. This alarms El Jassem, who questions whether students’ funding packages will be increased to students afford housing.
“If, as an employer and education institution, they don’t match it in funding and better wages, where’s this money coming from? We can’t print money, and we can’t take on even more work because then we can’t do research and that’s what we’re primarily here to do,” El Jassem said.
Kingston’s housing crisis regarding the lack of safe and affordable housing options disturbs El Jassem. With Queen’s being one of Kingston’s largest employers, there are doubts over the validity of the University’s self-proclaimed sustainable values.
“This is outrageous. The University talks about sustainable development goals. This isn’t sustainable because it’s a form of extraction of resources from the City by making the housing market more scarce. That’s what Queen’s is doing, there’s no sustainability in this,” El Jassem said.
Milka Njoroge, a PhD candidate in the gender studies department, is the chair of PSAC 901’s affordable housing working group. She emphasized resources alone are insufficient unless they directly help tenants. Providing links to websites is an ineffective form of .
“I don’t see the point of having those resources. Divest that money from resources into actually building houses,” Njoroge said in an interview with The Journal.
Njoroge said how the uncertainty surrounding the renovations and rent increases jeopordizes residents and their familties, leaving them in “limbo.” Without clarity on Queen’s plans for their residence, residents don’t know how to budget their stipends or prioritize their time.
An Clachan residents fear they won’t be able to afford housing and may be forced to move out if the redevelopment project moves forward. Many tenants are concerned they’ll have to drop out of their program if housing becomes more expensive.
“A big concern for all of us is if we are turned out of this housing, which we can already barely afford, we will be homeless. If we can’t afford to live in the City, we’ll have to leave,” Taylor said.
For PSAC 901, advocacy is underway. Representing a smaller group of students, talk to each other and are able to communicate on the best advocacy approaches, but they can’t do it alone and are ing other students to get involved.
“The demand is don’t abolish the current housing, find a way to build more housing without necessarily abolishing the current housing. We do feel like that’s a fair ask of the university,” Njoroge said.
*Name changed to protect student’s employment with the University.
Corrections
A previous version of this article incorrectly reported an individual’s place of residence as being An Clachan. Incorrect information appeared in the Dec. 1 issue of The Queen’s Journal.
The Journal regrets the error
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