How you know you are living in a " Waterloo universities neighbourhood"

You've awakened to find people passed out on your lawn.
They were unhappy when you woke them up at 7 a.m. as you left for work.

The ambulance had to take one of them away to hospital at 3 in the morning.

You've seen a couple having sex on a major Waterloo street.

You've seen young people, male and female, urinating in full view, day and/or night..

You've had the neighbours next door come to your property to urinate while having a party at their house, in spite of having two bathrooms inside their own house and a very large backyard of their own.

You saw this happen once, mere steps off the sidewalk at 4 in the afternoon when WCI school buses could have driven by.

You have witnessed a group of 10 men break into 3 smaller groups and urinate simultaneously on 3 successive lawns on Albert St. at 8 p.m. mere steps off the sidewalk.

You know what a UHonk and we'll drink party is.

You've swept up broken glass over and over and over, and so have the 80 year olds living in the neighbourhood.

The mayor doesn't reply to your emails.

You can hear WLU's PA system, word for word, at 1 in the morning.

You can hear UW's PA system from their new football field all afternoon.

Your neighbours sit on upholstered furniture on their front lawns, drinking alcohol, and leave the furniture there in the rain.

You've witnessed a party where students emptied one round of beer, buried the beer bottles in the lawn neckdown, then threw the rest of the bottles they emptied at the buried bottles, trying to break them.

Garbage lies on lawns and boulevards for weeks on end and the bylaw enforcement dept. doesn't do a thing about it.

Bylaw officers have told you they are afraid to approach or charge lawbreakers in your neighbourhood. They refer to it as "taking their lives in their hands."

You have witnessed them being treated this way.

Your neighbours think The City doesn't know what the term "Neighbourhood Preservation Model" means. (see the Student Accommodation Report.)

The schools and churches in your neighbourhood have been rezoned for mult-storey apt. buildings. (WCI - MR4; St. David's - MR6/12; St. Michael's Church - MR6; Pentecostal Assembly - MR25.)

700 charges were laid by the police in your neighbourhood - IN ONE MONTH!!!
You wonder why London students are such underachievers.

You've been told that you have no business living in the neighbourhood by university students, even though you've been there for decades.

You can't use your own driveway because the girls next door find it more convenient to use yours rather than their own - after all you've shovelled and they haven't.

You ask someone to move their car out of your driveway and they refuse and stay there.

Even when the students are warned in a personal visit from the police that they aren't to park in your driveway, they persist.

Your neighbours set off fireworks so close to your property that the fireworks shower over your fence.

You are regularly awakened in the wee hours of the morning by one or two fireworks being set off.

Your neighbours are moving out before they can even sell their homes because their quality of life is so bad.

A single mother raising a 12 year old son moves out, in spite of loving her home, saying the "neighbourhod isn't fit to live in anymore."

The city rezoned the border of your two - block wide neighbourhood for apt. buildings designed to house only university students (5 bedroom units) while saying that they want to encourage famlies and young professionals to move into the houses inside this border.

There was a policy in place of not charging the majority of the residents of your neighbourhood (a very specific demographic) for breaking laws and bylaws, even when police/bylaw were called to the same address repeatedly in the same night.

YOu have watched a house of able-bodied university girls park their cars blocking the sidewalk for 3 years forcing people in wheelchairs out into busy traffic, and nobody did a thing about it no matter how often you advocated for the wheelchair bound residents.

When people were breaking the law in your neighbourhood you were told that it was your fault for not giving them welcome bags, making them muffins, or inviting them to dinner at your house.

When you were begging for help The City called it "bitching".

In 6 years there have been 5 beatings and two people stabbed (known of) within 3 blocks of your house - several of them severe.

Your neighbourhood had a brawl involving 35 people at 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning in the summer.

Several nights a week you are awakened by drunken people going up your street yelling at the top of their lungs.

The majority of people living in your neighbourhood, zoned SR2, are people who arrive for 4 or 8 month terms, then leave, subletting to new people.

People in other parts of the city feel sorry for you, saying it's a shame what has happened to your neighbourhood.

You know from experience that Animal House wasn't fiction.

You regularly see people walking with open beer bottles, and find empty kegger cups all over the streets/lawns.

You have seen young women staggering drunk up your sidewalk alone late at night.

The sidewalk cable boxes on your street are destroyed as if on a schedule.
You have actually lost phone service as a result of this behaviour.

Your neighbours routinely light fires in their backyard, sometimes using neighbouring fences for fuel.

You have had boards removed from your fence so students don't have to walk so far to school and can cut through your property.

You are over 75 years of age and have been threatened with being beaten up by students who wanted to cut through your property.

You and/or your neighbours have had your blue boxes, yard waste, and/or garbaged dumped into the street.

You have watched a whole family of skunks rip open and rummage in the garbage for a week on Albert St. while bylaw did nothing about it. (proactive? hmmm. let me look that up.)

Your fence has been broken down over and over and over.

You have had items stolen off your property.

You have had someone damage your swimming pool by throwing a glass topped table into it, forcing you to replace the liner.

You have witnessed parties with more than a hundred attendees.

You had a party across the street from you with dozens of attendees last for 24 hours, and even though dispatch was called 3 times nobody showed up.
Then you were blamed for not calling soon enough, even though you reported the party before it started when you saw the keg arrive.

You have watched garbage rot in the driveway of a licenced lodging house for weeks with nobody taking it away, and nobody being charged.

You were promised proactive/zero tolerance enforcement and got no enforcement, as a policy.

You were named the Universities Neighbourhood - nice branding, handing ownership off like that, without consulting the residents.

The Town and Gown committee was reorganized so one of your neighbours who sat on it was excluded and no residents were privy to what went on there. (what part of "town" don't they get?)

They rejected your suggestions for how to help the area, only to have the suggestions adopted by other university cities.

You have no fewer than 3 "bottle collectors" who traverse your neighbourhood collecting empties from front lawns, front porches and even going into backyards for empties.

Stores tell you they don't deliver flyers to your neighbourhood because "it's all university students up there."

When you call dispatch for help they ask if you are a landlord. You say no. They say, well, it's all students up there. (You have lived there for 30 years.)

You find a website where people advise other non-students not to live in your neighbourhood when they move to town to take their dream job.

People regularly abandon shopping carts on your street. There are two in the backyard beside your house.

People honk their horns in the middle of the night because they are leaving their friends' house.

People honk their horns in the middle of the night because they are arriving at a friend's house.

People honk their horns in the middle of the night because they are driving past a friend's house.

People honk their horns in the middle of the night because they have a horn.



Feel free to jump in, residents of the "universities neighbourhood."