An empty electrical box is bolted to the wall beside the front door of 381 Bagot St. in Kingston, Ont.
Similar boxes are scattered around the social housing building outside stairwells and elevators. All are empty.
They’re supposed to hold a fob reader for a high-tech security system that’s meant to make the troubled highrise safer. But more than half a year after the Kingston Frontenac Housing Corporation (KFHC) said installation of new locks would be underway, residents are still using their old keys to get in.
Meanwhile, the building continues to rack up more police calls than any other residential address in the city.
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Mary Lynn Cousins Brame, KFHC’s CEO, previously told CBC that installation of the lock system would begin in January. Seven months later, tenants are still waiting.
“The locking mechanism systems are in high demand and they were on back order for three months, so that has caused the project to be delayed,” Cousins Brame said in an interview at the end of June.
At the time, she said the locks were expected to arrive shortly and installation would take four to six weeks, so the system should be in place sometime in August.
A notice delivered to tenants last Friday provided a new deadline: Wwork on “door security” will begin during the first week of August and will take “approximately three months to complete,” moving the expected completion date to October.
Tracey Nicholson said tenants of the building were originally told KFHC planned to have the locks working by March, and said staff apologized for the delays earlier this summer.
Whenever the system is installed, it will come too late for Nicholson, who moved out of the 381 Bagot St. at the end of May.
She waited 11 years for social housing, but only lasted around four at the orange brick building that she dubbed “Trauma Tower” because living there shattered her physical and mental health.
Nicholson said a break-in at her unit earlier this year finally pushed her over the edge. With the help of a community member, she found an apartment that’s not owned by KFHC.
“I can go outside now when it’s dark, so I get to see the stars. I don’t have to sleep with a weapon under my pillow, so that’s a great thing,” she said. “And when I am out doing errands, I look forward to coming home because it’s a safe place to be.”
Kingston Police statistics show that between Jan. 1 and the beginning of July, the force had received 151 calls for service at the Bagot Street building.
That’s the most of any residential address in the city, but the building isn’t the only KFHC property seeing plenty of police.
According to police data, seven of the top 10 addresses for police calls in Kingston are buildings owned by the social housing provider.
Cousins Brame, the CEO, called those statistics accurate, though she added a partnership with police and Kingston’s fire department has led to some reduction in emergency responses.
“Our population is vulnerable. That’s why they’re in social housing, they have all kinds of needs,” she said, noting guests of tenants and other people who find their way into the buildings also cause problems.
“We’ve had a number of units that have been taken over by drug dealers, where tenants have left the unit. So yes, police calls, fire calls and emergency services, yes, are much higher.”
Despite those figures, Cousins Brame said “high-security” locking systems won’t be installed at all KFHC sites, just its large and midrise apartment buildings.
The CEO said residents will be able to flash their fobs to enter the property, activate the elevator or access the stairwells, then scan them again to enter their own units.
That means even if someone sneaks into the building they’ll be limited to the main floor, according to Cousins Brame, who said that should cut down on the “homeless and unwanted people” who have been causing problems.
Cousins Brame also stood by a comment she first made to CBC in December that tenants have a responsibility to look after their own safety.
“Maintain your apartment doors being locked. Don’t wander the halls and all hours of the night,” she again advised residents during the June interview.
Carrie Anne Marshall, a Western University professor whose focuses include homelessness and social housing, pushed back against that idea, saying it’s a landlord’s responsibility to ensure tenants are safe, regardless of whether the building they own is social housing or market-rate.
“If you have people who are largely traumatized who are all living in the same building together, and then they can’t wander the hallways at night for fear of victimization, I think that’s a serious problem,” she said.
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Marshall interviewed KFHC staff and tenants as part of a report published in 2024.
Her team found social housing providers see themselves as landlords, not a support system for tenants — a stance Cousins Brame has shared in the past.
That’s led to “a lot of finger-pointing” between community service providers and KFHC about who should be addressing the needs of tenants, according to the professor.
Marshall said in recent years the population living in social housing has changed to include many people with “very complex” trauma and mental health needs, all under the same roof.
She said that while she’s not sure a fob system will “change everything,” KFHC must pay attention to the results once the locks are in use to evaluate whether they’re actually making a difference.
The social housing provider is also planning to add a tenant representative as a voting member of its board sometime this winter, after that move was recommended by an operational review earlier this year.
Nicholson, the resident who left 381 Bagot St., said she’s glad to be out despite the financial stress that leaving social housing has caused her.
The sooner the new locks can be installed the better, she said.
“What a great feeling it is to be safe,” Nicholson said. “People take that for granted.”
