North Hamilton residents to get relief as rats run rampant

When neighbours Amanda Pollington and Helen Wall sit on their front porches to sip their morning coffee, they can commiserate with each other about rats scurrying through their homes.

“I had 18 that I killed in less than a week,” Pollington says. “They actually made a nest in my stove.”

“They can get pretty big,” Wall adds.

So much so that Maggie, her old cat, won’t take them on. “She’s of no use, no use.”

But Wall and Pollington aren’t the only ones swapping hairy rat tales.

In fact, the infestation in their north Hamilton neighbourhood is so bad, a local charity is teaming up with an exterminator and the city to offer it a big dose of rodent relief.

The project focuses on nine blocks in Keith, where residents live in the shadow of industry just south of Burlington Street and east of Victoria Avenue.

The plan is to visit 180 homes to find out how many need help, says Rev. Don MacVicar, who is co-director with his wife, Carole, of Inner City Outreach Ministry, which operates out of the Eva Rothwell Centre on Wentworth Street North.

“This has been identified as a need and we just want to help,” MacVicar said, noting the cost of extermination services can be out of reach for households.

This week, city council authorized up to $25,000 for the ministry’s efforts to co-ordinate the eradication, a “health equity initiative” that’s to include a neighbourhood cleanup as well.

The plan is to set up 15 large garbage bins for residents to discard wood and other materials in their yards under which rats could hunker down.

A week of preparation is planned for late June, culminating in a volunteer-powered cleanup day on the 24th. “It will be a good refresh for the community all around,” MacVicar said.

Exterminator Jim Miner, who has already offered his services at reduced rates to Keith residents, recalls one particularly severe case.

“The rats were eating through the walls in the bedrooms. They were running through the house,” said Miner, whose business is Action Pest Control.

Then, he went into the garage. “I counted at least 15 rats in broad daylight.”

It’s not clear what drew the rats to the Keith homes, but Coun. Nrinder Nann suggests the demolition of the area’s old Studebaker factory about a decade ago for redevelopment could have flushed the burrowers out.

“It’s been a reoccurring thing,” said Nann, who led this week’s funding motion.

Initial direction from public health to help residents shed the rats didn’t work, the Ward 3 councillor said. “The colony was established.”

Keith is a “challenged neighbourhood” where households don’t necessarily have the wherewithal to deal with rodent infestations, Miner said. “What happened is it just festered. It wasn’t taken care of, and it’s nobody’s fault.”

Wall and Pollington, who live just south of the former Studebaker site, say the rats only recently took up residence in their homes. Both point out their yards are neat and tidy.

“I honestly think last year is when it literally started getting really bad around here,” Pollington said.

The Keith problem is one thing, but the spectre of rats running rampant could also be a potential side effect of Hamilton’s upcoming Metrolinx-led LRT construction, Miner warned.

If no measures are taken, “downtown will be a nightmare of rats,” he said, noting the sewers “are full of them.”

As part of the city’s development approvals process, developers are required to establish a construction management plan that can require pest control measures, including for demolitions.

Metrolinx has already demolished buildings along the future Main-King-Queenston route in the run-up to major construction.

In an email, the provincial transportation agency said it has “implemented a pest management plan for its demolition contractors, which includes monitoring and mitigation measures.”

So far, it has “not had any reports of pest infiltration to nearby properties.”

In recent years, rat complaints to the city have ebbed and flowed. They crested to 348 in 2019 and dropped to a couple in 2021, according to public health’s figures.

“The escalation and/or displacement of rodent populations are due to many factors,” Kevin McDonald, director of healthy environments, said via email.

That includes construction and demolition projects, but also food sources, like garbage, bird feeders and vegetable gardens, as well as “appropriate habitats” for population growth.

Wall and Pollington have received Miner’s help. With children at home, keeping the rats at bay is of the utmost concern.

“I’m scrubbing the urine off the walls to make sure that baby don’t get sick,” Pollington said.

And like Wall’s cat, her feline, Shadow, is of no use either.

“She’ll chase mice. She’ll kill them, but rats, they won’t touch them. Cats won’t touch rats.”

For about two weeks, the coast has been clear in Wall’s house.

“I haven’t seen any recently,” she says, before finding some wood to knock on.

To volunteer for the June 24 cleanup, call Inner City Outreach Ministry: 289-489-7952.

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