Door-to-door vaccine clinic at Rebecca Towers a great success
Door-to-door vaccine clinics should be repeated at all Hamilton apartment buildings as proactive strategy to prevent future apartment outbreaks and deaths
Hamilton Public Health is reporting a total of 86 Rebecca Towers tenants got vaccinated over the weekend. 28 neighbours received their vaccines at the building. Another 58 neighbours got vaccinated at First Ontario Centre and other clinics in Hamilton. The Rebecca Towers Tenant Committee played a very important role in the success of the vaccination rollout.
Following our meeting with City of Hamilton Public Health staff and doctors from the Primary Care Team on Wednesday, May 12, the tenant committee conducted extensive outreach. We drafted outreach materials, did translation, design, printing, and distribution. We put up posters in the building on each floor. We delivered flyers to every unit, slipping them under the door. We did this as a crew of volunteers from the Rebecca Towers Tenant Committee, all tested-negative individuals wearing masks and gloves. These materials listed the dates for the vaccine clinics. These materials reassured our neighbours that the vaccine is safe to receive and encouraged everyone to sign up. We made sure to translate materials into the languages commonly spoken in the building, including English, French, Spanish, Somali, Arabic, Ahmeric, Korean, Chinese, Hindi and Farsi. We did this with the help of tenants in the building and other friends of ours from the Hamilton community.
We also sent an email blast and split up calls to everyone on our contact list for the 164 units. We made everyone aware of the transportation options available for those who wanted to go to First Ontario Centre for the mass vaccination clinic. For those who were scared to leave their units and felt more comfortable receiving their vaccines at home, we took calls and logged these requests in a spreadsheet that we sent to city staff. As a group, we fielded hundreds of calls over the course of a couple days. We answered our fellow tenants’ questions about the vaccine as best we could, for those who were worried about side effects of vaccines or had other hesitations. We encouraged everyone to get vaccinated. For more complicated questions, we encouraged people to call their family doctors or contact the public health hotline. Because we have relationships with many of our neighbours and have established a rapport through food deliveries and campaigns around the recent fire, rent increases, etc., the tenant committee is a trusted voice in the building.
To do outreach to our Somali neighbours, we worked with young Somali tenants in the building and a Somali friend who is a social worker, well trusted in the community, to make calls and distribute flyers with vaccine information translated into Somali. This approach proved very successful. Our friend reported every Somali family decided to get their vaccines.
Many of us preferred to get vaccinated in our units, rather than going to the mass vaccination clinic. Many of us are scared to leave our units to bring our garbage to the shoot, to do our laundry, to pick up groceries from the lobby when friends drop it off, etc. Due to the ventilation problems in the building, the lack of cleaning (still unaddressed by our landlord, Medallion Corporation) and the large scale of the outbreak, many of us are scared to leave our units for any reason. This is especially true for those of us who are elderly, those with autoimmune diseases or other pre-existing health conditions, tenants with disabilities, parents of infants and young children, etc.
In the Rebecca Towers case, and the other apartment outbreaks in the city, City of Hamilton Public Health staff are refusing to provide on-site vaccine clinics. Instead, the city wants apartment building residents to travel to the mass vaccination clinics. In our case, they were willing to set aside a block of appointments at First Ontario Centre for us to walk in, without needing to wait in a line. They were also willing to provide transportation to the location, by school bus. But this did not allay the fears many of us in the building had. We did not like the idea of leaving our units to breathe the air in the hallways and common areas. We did not like the idea of crowding with our neighbours in the hallway while waiting for an elevator, or taking the narrow stairwells at the same time to go to the clinic for the half-hour slot. We did not like the idea of riding the school bus together as a group to the clinic and back. We feared we might get exposed to the virus in the process. We also feared we might inadvertently infect other members of the Hamilton community. We felt it would be irresponsible to travel to the mass vaccination clinic for this reason.
This is why many of us preferred to get vaccinated at home. On Sunday, May 16, a team of doctors and paramedics came to the building. The vaccines were drawn up based on the registration list we provided. Doctors split up into pairs and knocked on doors. They gave the shots and sat with each of us for fifteen minutes to ensure there was no immediate negative reaction. A paramedic was on-site and on call, in the event someone needed assistance. However, nothing unexpected happened and everyone was fine. We were so happy and relieved to receive our vaccines!
“Today was a great and exciting day for me and my family living at Rebecca Towers. Despite having an outbreak in our building and my family contracting covid we can still see some lights around the corner. Raising demands finally brought Hamilton Public Health to provide vaccine at our door step. Me, my wife, and my mom all got our first shot. We are feeling safer now as we try to give good care to our newborn daughter. I especially thank the doctor and their team who did a tremendous job to fulfill our immunization demand and also Rebecca Towers Tenant Committee who has stood together to unite all tenants for their health safety and well being.” — Arefin
There were many people in the building who would have liked to get their vaccine door-to-door on Sunday but weren’t yet eligible. This includes many of our neighbours who tested positive following the door-to-door testing by paramedics on May 6th and 7th. Some of them were still isolating and not yet eligible to get vaccinated, though they will be shortly. We hope the Primary Care Team of doctors will return for another on-site clinic to provide this opportunity. We will be raising this demand to the city, to ensure the remainder of our neighbours can safely get the vaccines they have been waiting for and desperately want.
At Monday’s City of Hamilton Board of Health meeting and in comments to the local media, city staff bragged about the highly successful vaccination rollout at the Rebecca Towers. City staff have been under considerable pressure to control the outbreak and repair the damage largely brought about by their own negligence. As has been documented, city staff knew about the rising case count since March but didn’t inform us until May. They did not properly investigate the conditions in the building. Without bothering to speak with tenants and ask us about our experiences and concerns about the building, Dr. Elizabeth Richardson, Chief Medical Officer of Health blamed the outbreak on tenant socialization and negligence. Richardson continues to dismiss tenants’ concerns about the ventilation problems in the building, even though medical experts, such as Dr. David Fisman and Dr. Isaac Bogoch, and engineering experts, such as David Elfstrom, argue this is likely the major reason for the outbreak. Richardson has not issued an order requiring an engineer from the City of Hamilton’s Chief Building Office to inspect the ventilation systems in the building, though this is within her power. Richardson has not issued an order requiring an enforcement officer from the City of Hamilton’s Licensing & By-law Services department to compel Medallion to make both elevators operational, though this is within her power.
The success of the vaccination rollout at the Rebecca Towers is chiefly due to the strong organization of tenants in the building and the work of the Rebecca Towers Tenant Committee, not Hamilton Public Health management staff. We are of course hugely grateful to the doctors, nurses, and paramedics who administered the vaccines. These are the healthcare heroes who have been working tirelessly through the pandemic to care for Hamiltonians. But Public Health staff were dismissive and unhelpful to us. They never responded to the letter we sent on Friday, May 7th. When they finally met with us on Wednesday, May 12th, they came with a pre-set vaccination plan and were unwilling to listen to our suggestions. When we asked about help with paying for translation of outreach materials, for printing costs for posters and flyers, for sourcing and purchasing personal protective equipment, they provided no assistance. We did all of this ourselves as tenants and pooled our money to pay for the things we needed. City staff admit the so-called “vaccine ambassadors” were hired and trained a couple days ago. City staff told us they would come to the building to do door-to-door outreach on Friday, May 14th. We provided them with a list of unit numbers and language preferences in advance. They never came. City staff told us the on-site clinic would be starting Saturday, May 15th. They cancelled at the last minute. Without warning, they informed us late Friday evening they would come on Sunday, May 16th instead. We have learned from tenants at 151 Queen Street North, another apartment building with an outbreak, that people there are receiving $50 per day from the city to purchase food, given five masks per household per day, and have an ambulance stationed at the building 24/7 in the event of an emergency. None of these things have been provided by city staff to us at the Rebecca Towers.
As the tenant committee, we did all of the work to share information about the vaccines, get our neighbours to the clinics, answer questions, provide reassurance for a few vaccine-hesitant people, and ensured the vaccination program was a success. As a tenant committee, we have also been coordinating distribution of personal protective equipment and grocery deliveries to our neighbours, with financial support from community members and local unions. Due to the outbreak and lack of proper cleaning by Medallion, Canada Post has suspended delivery to our building and many people are worried they won’t receive their OW, ODSP, CCB, and OAS cheques this month. Many of our neighbours are struggling. We have coordinated food deliveries to anyone in need, without any assistance from the city or politicians, and certainly no help from the landlord, Medallion. As working-class people, we have power when we draw upon the relationships we have with each other, in this case as tenants who live in a high-rise building together. We can organize together to demand vaccines be brought to our doors and make sure the city follows through. We can care for each other and find solutions to our pressing needs, in this case by pooling our resources for groceries and PPE. When landlords, government officials, and politicians ignore us or bullshit us, we take matters into our own hands and get things done.
We do not recount this experience with Hamilton Public Health staff to be petty or rude. We are grateful to receive the vaccines. We mention this because we believe it exposes the callous and disdainful attitude City management and politicians have towards working-class people, not only at Rebecca Towers but across Hamilton.
On Friday, May 14, 2021 a city staffer accidentally CC’ed the tenant committee on an email with the subject line “Confidential — please do not share with tenants.” This was part of an email chain between the tenant committee and public health staff to coordinate the vaccination plan for our building. In the email, the staffer admits the main objection to on-site vaccination is not insufficient time to plan it, lack of money, or lack of medical personnel, but instead the fear of “precedence” it would set for tenants in other apartment buildings across the city. The staffer asserts the door-to-door vaccines should be “reserved specifically for those [who] are physically / emotionally / psychologically ‘unable’” to attend a mass vaccination clinic such as First Ontario Centre. Doesn’t living in an active outbreak building, a high-rise death chamber with 163 other households, qualify?! All of us are experiencing some form of physical, emotional, and psychological distress. We are living in constant fear of sickness and death. If these decision makers — city managers and politicians — had any compassion, they would bring the vaccine to all residents of Rebecca Towers, door-to-door, without hesitation.
As Rebecca Towers tenant Lloyd Smith pointed out in his letter to the editor in the weekend edition of the Hamilton Spectator: “The outbreak at Rebecca Towers is by far the largest active outbreak in the city. Only two outbreaks have been larger, the ones at Grace Villa and the Rosalynn. For those two the city stepped up and called on Hamilton Health Sciences for assistance, but for Rebecca Towers the city will do nothing…Sadly, my only conclusion is the city feels the people at Rebecca Towers are not significant.”
As of May 2021, we are now in the fourteenth month of this terrible pandemic. It is unconscionable city staff and politicians did not anticipate the entirely predictable situation of apartment building outbreaks and plan accordingly. There are hundreds of apartment buildings across the city. Many are located in dense, working-class neighbourhoods where vaccination rates are low, probably due to lack of access. Thousands of Hamilton tenants are at risk of sickness and death. This could be avoided if city staff organized door-to-door clinics offering vaccines to tenants on-site at apartment buildings as a proactive strategy, before any more outbreaks occur and before any more tenants die.
“This whole experience of having the vaccination has been so hassle-free. Obviously because we had it on-site, but another reason being the doctors who made it seem so easy and comfortable for us to get the shot. My husband said it all went so smoothly, especially because we didn’t have to step out from our apartment. We were worried at the thought of having to pass through this building with an outbreak to go to the mass vaccine clinic at First Ontario Centre. We have a four-month-old baby and we were really concerned about taking him along.” — Rhea
The success of the vaccine rollout at Rebecca Towers is due to the high level of organization in our building. Many buildings across Hamilton are not organized, sadly. Many tenants are isolated, and this has been made worse by the pandemic. If city staff and politicians think they can replicate the piecemeal vaccination program for Rebecca Towers at other buildings with the same level of success, they are delusional. If they really care about mitigating “systemic issues of health equity” and “social determinants of health”, in their own words, they would listen to the pleas of working-class people and bring the vaccine to our doors, today.
All photographs courtesy of Rebecca Towers Tenant Committee. Photographed and shared with permission.
