Kingston Student Ghetto

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The Kingston Student Ghetto is a studentified residential area surrounding Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada that is inhabited entirely by students of the University. The ghetto’s borders are not clearly defined, but it generally includes homes within a fifteen-minute walk of campus, especially along the north/south running University Avenue.

Because the ghetto has a very large student population, the area is known for being loud and active on weekend nights, and close to empty over holidays and during the summer months. The student ghetto is especially infamous for its street parties; the best known of these being the annual Aberdeen (Street) homecoming party. Although there have been ad campaigns encouraging students to be responsible, it's not clear how effective control will be.

The area is not truly a ghetto, but is so called because of the generally older houses in it. Most houses are owned by private individuals and are rented to groups of four to twelve students on yearly leases. Other houses are owned as part of a group by ether a local citizen, a co-op, or the university itself.

The student housing area in Kingston is quite large relative to those in comparable university towns; a majority of undergraduate students live either in the ghetto itself or on its outskirts. There are numerous reasons for this:

• Queen’s University only has enough undergraduate residences for a small number of students after first year. This may change in upcoming years, as extra spaces were created to accommodate the one-time surge in enrolment due to Ontario’s double cohort year.
• The level of roads, public transit system, and on-campus parking in the city make it impractical for thousands of students to commute every day.
• The city of Kingston limits developers’ ability to build large apartment buildings near the city’s core; there is currently only one building that noticeably stands above the city’s skyline, which was constructed before the bylaw took effect.
• The AMS, Queen's University's undergraduate student government, does not allow Queen's students to be members of a fraternity or sorority, so the lodging commonly provided by frat houses in the United States is non-existent within Kingston's core.

In September, 2006, demolition began on one of blocks of the Ghetto just north of the Queen's campus to make way for the building of the new Queen's Centre building. The block is bordered by Division St to the east, Clergy St to the south, University Ave to the west, and Earl St to the north. The block was home to some famous Ghetto houses, including the Journal House (former offices of the Queen's Journal), and the Barber Shop (student house). The block also contained the Kingston Curling Club.