As I woefully approach my 5th calendar year in my university town, I grow exponentially more aware of the contextual clues consistently littered in plain-view among Peterborough's streets, all respectively indicative of an impending time of year, and actions that accompany them. For instance, the day the decorative LED snowflakes are perched atop each lamp post on George Street serve as a mildly-interesting spectacle at face value, but I imagine also act to many as a polite cue to retrieve puffer jackets from storage bins and remove spring tires before they meet their match in a matter of weeks. At the time of writing this, I am surrounded by the same predictable contextual clues that would lead me to believe I am once again experiencing late Spring/early Summer in Peterborough, Ontario. For one, our transit system imposed ‘reduced summer hours’ that are not quite the same as the previous years, but equally as inconvenient (Yeah, you, Route 11 Water – or lackthereof). The median age demographic of downtown bars has shifted from 21 to 40, and my personal favourite; Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji and Instagram stories alike are inundated with desperate pleas for summer sublets, and bricked-up landlords with dollar-sign shaped pupils salivating at the sight of a Bethune street home that has not yet been converted into a six-bedroom apartment. 

Reflecting on these pervasive housing crisis reminders as a recent graduate evokes both a sense of fear and relief. Fear, that each new student entering through the three–five year long revolving door that is Trent University, could be the straw that breaks the camel's back with regards to Peterborough's strained housing market. Relief, that my rotation through Trents’ revolving door has come to an end, and said straw was not me. 

Due to the intrinsic nature of who I am, and the fact rental horror stories in this city are just about as easy to come across as F[MapleLeaf.png]ck Trudeau bumper stickers, I am unable to produce a piece of writing on the calamities of the Peterborough housing market without primarily drawing from personal experience. With that being said, allow me to contextualize my aforementioned relief and hopefully warrant at least one person to give me a pat on the back and say “Wow, you are so brave, here is $20”. 

In the late spring of 2018, like many first-time renters, my previous nine months in a dorm seriously skewed my perception of necessary factors in a living space. To be rather frank, it was solely a $500/month price tag and grabby “LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!’ tagline in my first apartment’s Kijiji listing that captured my attention and tenancy shortly afterwards. 

‘My brother in Christ, I have not used a stove for 39 weeks and the last time I could comfortably shower barefoot, The Big Bang Theory was on air…I’ll take anything under $600!’

(Isla Gole’s internal monologue scouring Places4students.com in June of 2019)

Little thought and a $1000 deposit later, I had comfortably settled into my first of what would be seven (7) different apartments that would provide me with shelter during my undergraduate experience. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ I thought to myself moments before my gaunt, bathrobe-clad neighbour (with enough drugs in his system to watch a Uranium-235 isotope completely decay before beginning his comedown) began to scream bloody murder and hurl sexist epithets outside my door whilst sweeping a kitchen knife underneath it. Mind you, I have had my fair share of catty spats in my semi-recent teenage years, they never involved knife-play of any sort, but certainly featured frequent verbal ping pong games exchanging the words “Bitch” “Whore” and “Bitch” (again), sometimes I’d instigate, sometimes I’d even deserve it, however, I had not exchanged more than a ‘hello’ with my neighbour before he came to the conclusion he wanted to turn me into a lampshade and sell my remaining eggs on silk road. 

My apartment quickly became a constant state of fear and discomfort—rightfully so, as these passionate bursts of death threats and knife displays remained frequent and random. 

Deciding I was in a now life-threatening situation, as opposed to a merely uncomfortable one, I, for the first time, dialed 911. Luckily for me, or so I thought, the Peterborough Police station was within a >0.5km radius of my living quarters. I shakily explained the situation to the operator, holding back tears as I provided my address, anxiously awaiting their arrival. 

10, 20, 30 minutes elapsed before I opted to invite my male friend over to escort me off of the premises. In the several hours I was able to leave my apartment, walk to Brothers Pizza, and watch three episodes of Xavier Renegade Angel in the safety of my friends' home, only then did I receive a voicemail notification from the Police Department, alerting me in a “We missed you!” courier fashion, that they did in fact come to my building, but left shortly thereafter due to their presumed absence of reason to intervene. 

Re: ‘Luckily for me…the Peterborough Police station was within a >0.5km radius of my living quarters’ (Gole, 2023), which is why it took an entire afternoon to respond right? Perhaps there was an eyesore (a vacant tent) plaguing one of our beautiful local parks that required expedited removal, or hell, maybe a homeless person who looked too happy that the Peterborough Police Department opted to tend to before my own predicament. The least they could have done was leave me on hold with a two minute tinny-sounding loop of royalty free music, but I digress.

A week following the police debacle, my landlord deemed my roommate and I’s current situation an ‘emergency’, and offered to transfer the remainder of our lease to a stark, McCafe-looking 80% complete apartment, provided we agreed to either move out or renew the lease at the end of May (In other words, we agreed upon living in a construction zone owned by a landlord playing  the floor is lava with zoning by-laws). 

Seeing that the bar for living quarters had been abruptly lowered to ‘stay alive in it’, the infrequent lack of running water, illegal living room fire door installations, and sawdust colonies in apartment no. 2 left our lord of the land legally unscathed. 

Prior to the string of legal grey areas and N11 forms I would continue to encounter in apartments to come, I had never been one for adopting an Always Sunny S10E4-type diligence with regards to my rights as a tenant. I was equipped with a rather bare-bones starter pack of what should and shouldn't be. It would be the years of Kijiji doom-scrolling and legal oopsies that would cement tenant rights as an accidental special interest of sorts. 

I believe that it would be frivolous to use the next section to info-dump already public statistics on Peterborough’s strained rental market, and Trent University’s over enrollment rates only adding fire to an already rampant flame, as they have been worded far more proficiently by fellow exhausted colleagues than Arthur’s greenest journalist could pull off at the moment. Instead, I'd like to reflect on my bible (Residential Tenancies Act, 2006) consulting days as an undergraduate student, desperate to diminish any naivety indicators that inadvertently made my housing saga all the more turbulent. I loathe the fact that I had to burn myself to figure out the stove is in fact hot, however, in my defense, c. 17, s. 25 (1) of the Residential Tenancies Act was difficult to read in 2019 while drywall debris was accumulating in my eyes.

TLDR; Know your rights, use your resources and never take legal advice from a contract journalist who dispels sawdust upon exhaling