In May 2021, the residents of a 1960s-vintage slab-style apartment building called Rebecca Towers in Hamilton, Ontario, found themselves in the jaws of a rapidly worsening COVID-19 outbreak. That month, according to Hamilton Public Health, cases were identified in seventeen units on ten floors. More than 100 tenants eventually tested positive, and one died. With the pandemic into its second year, outbreaks in large residential buildings were by no means unusual, but this one sent shock waves beyond the city.
Frightened tenants staged rallies, appealing to the city’s public health officials to set up a mobile vaccination clinic on their street. (The city offered to expedite vaccinations for the building residents at another location.) Residents also accused the property managers of neglecting the routine upkeep of the ventilation systems; photographs shared online showed air ducts clogged with junk left over from renovations. “A lot of these repairs date back to before the pandemic,” Richard Weiss, a tenant, told the Hamilton Spectator.
