Nivethinie Sivakumar (She/Her/Hers)
Tell us about yourself:
I am a 4th year undergraduate student at McMaster university, purusing a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree in Life Sciences. The Life Sciences uses interdisciplinary approaches to studying life and everything that it encompasses. My aspirations are to be of service to humanity in anything I do and to give back to community. I believe CityLAB SIR will contribute to that as my learnings were rooted in social wellbeing and principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion.
How is your project going so far?
My project focused on the housing crisis in Hamilton, with particular interest on the market home rentals and market homeownership. We set out our goals to engage with and accurately assess the needs of Hamilton residents and stakeholders, as well as to gather research on the current housing market, the historical context, and trajectory of the Hamilton housing crisis. In addition, we aimed to create proposed ideas that would inform the development of a plan to combat the bottle-neck effects in the housing continuum. This would then allow us to design ideas for a plan to make additions to the market housing supply through direct additions or existing housing stock. Throughour our exploration process, we engaged with the Hamilton community, identified relevant stakeholders, and delivered a series of community dialogues that informed our stakeholders, and our project and created a space to discuss feasible solutions. The key findings that informed our recommendations to the City of Hamilton are that protecting tenants ensures security and stability of the market home landscape, additions to the housing stock may not always require new housing development, maintaining the status quo is needed to prevent regression, and that housing as a basic human necessity of shelter has become commodified.