Neighbourhood improvement programs
Holiday Housecheck Program
Holiday Housecheck is a free student-run service run by the Alma Mater Society that operates during the Winter and Summer breaks. [9] Participants have their mail collected and regular exterior inspections conducted on their homes while they are out of Kingston. Staff ensure doors are closed and locked, windows are closed and intact, snow is stomped down, and examine the premise for signs of break-in. The program typically reaches its capacity of 200 homes each year. [9]
Landlord Contract Program
This is a voluntary program run by Queen's University dept. of Community Housing for landlords who have had their units inspected by an independent third party for compliance with the City of Kingston's property standards by-law. [10] As of December 1, 2022, Queen's Community Housing has announced that it is winding down the Landlord Contract Program (LCP), and will no longer be accepting new properties. [11]
In return for successfully passing the property standards inspection and complying with several rules regarding limited rent increases and only renting to verified Queen's University students, units in the LCP were extended an exemption under the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006. The exemption permits a Tenancy Termination Agreement (N11)to be signed at the time that the lease is signed.
Student Maintenance and Resource Team (SMART)
SMART (Student Maintenance & Resource Team) provides property maintenance and community clean-up services to students, landlords, and other members of the Kingston community living in and around the University District. SMART focuses on lawn care and garbage removal for their contracted clients throughout the summer months. As students begin to arrive in the fall, SMART expands its role in ensuring that the University District is clean and safe. They host regular community-wide clean ups, paying particular attention to the busy times of the year, such as Orientation Week, Homecoming, Halloween, and St. Patrick's Day. [12] SMART, and the Alma Mater Society service, is entirely student-run.
Housing Resource Centre (HRC)
The Housing Resource Centre, also run by the Alma Mater Society, offers support for students who are experiencing a conflict with a landlord or housemate in a safe and confidential space. Trained student volunteers can also answer questions and provide information on property standards, leases, tenant rights, house hunting, home security, and more.
Social events
Throughout its history, the area has had a reputation of being loud and active, especially on weekend nights and during the annual Homecoming celebrations. Over the years, this created a significant amount of tension between students and non-student residents. Today, strong partnerships exist between City staff, City councillors, the Alma Mater Society, the Kingston Police Force, and Queen's University, which have largely curtailed these issues. Starting in 2017, tensions have increased as students are targeted by laws designed to suppress social activities.
Specifically, the ReUnion Street Festival has been quite successful in ensuring students enjoy homecoming in an enjoyable and responsible matter. The festivale can be described as a collection of programmed events that serve as the capstone for Queen's Homecoming. Its mission is to provide a regulated forum for students and alumni to unitedly celebrate their Queen's pride. The festival takes place on the Saturday night of every homecoming, and offers a solution to the previous lack of programming during this time period. It predominantly takes place on Union Street, between University Avenue and Division Street, with a separate designated and confined area for patrons of legal age to consume alcohol. Since its inception in 2014, the festival has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from alumni and students who attended the event, local police, Queen's University, city staff, and city councillors. [14]
A roommate is a person with whom one shares a living facility such as a room or dormitory except when being family or romantically involved. Similar terms include dorm-mate, suite-mate, housemate, or flatmate. Flatmate is the term most commonly used in New Zealand, when referring to the rental of an unshared room within any type of dwelling. Another similar term is sharemate. A sharehome is a model of household in which a group of usually unrelated people reside together, including lease-by-room arrangements. The term generally applies to people living together in rental properties rather than in properties in which any resident is an owner occupier. In the United Kingdom, the term "roommate" means a person living in the same bedroom, whereas in the United States and Canada, "roommate" and "housemate" are used interchangeably regardless whether a bedroom is shared, although it is common in US universities that having a roommate implies sharing a room together. This article uses the term "roommate" in the US sense of a person one shares a residence with who is not a relative or significant other. The informal term for roommate is roomie, which is commonly used by university students and members of the younger generation.
Homecoming is the tradition of welcoming back alumni or other former members of an organization to celebrate the organization's existence. It is a tradition in many high schools, colleges, and churches in the United States and Canada.
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Robert Sutherland (1830–1878), a native of Jamaica, was the first known graduate of colour at a Canadian university, and the first Black man to study law in British North America. A graduate of Queen's University, Sutherland qualified to practise law in Ontario under the then prevailing system of apprenticeship and examination. He studied at Osgoode Law School and practised law for 20 years in Walkerton, Ontario. Upon his death in 1878, Sutherland's left a large bequest to Queen's University, roughly equivalent to the institution's annual operating budget. This donation was the largest the school had ever received, saving it from financial catastrophe in a banking crisis.
The Mitchell–Lama Housing Program is a non-subsidy governmental housing guarantee in the state of New York. It was sponsored by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell and Assemblyman Alfred A. Lama. It was signed into law in 1955 as The Limited-Profit Housing Companies Act.
Queen's University at Kingston, commonly known as Queen's University or simply Queen's, is a public research university in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Queen's holds more than 1,400 hectares of land throughout Ontario and owns Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, England. Queen's is organized into eight faculties and schools.
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Thomas Robert Williams is a Canadian university professor and academic administrator, who served as the 19th principal of Queen's University, in Kingston, Ontario. He became principal and vice-chancellor of Queen's on May 1, 2008, following the in-term resignation of Karen Hitchcock. He concluded his term as principal on August 31, 2009.
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The Queen's Journal is the main student-run newspaper at Queen's University at Kingston in Kingston, Ontario. The paper was founded in 1873 and has been continually publishing ever since. It is as old as The Harvard Crimson, the oldest continuously published student newspaper in the United States. The Journal is published twice a week, usually on Tuesdays and Fridays. The 2021-22 Editors in Chief are Aysha Tabassum and Shelby Talbot. The publication is an editorially autonomous paper, guaranteed by the Alma Mater Society of Queen's University and its constitution and by-laws.
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