I just came upon this thread while looking for information on my neighbourhood in Hamilton, which turns out to be Landsdale (I live on West Ave.). I've rented here for two years now and overall it's not too bad. There's a lot of petty crime -- I've had a couple of bikes stolen and our neighbour had his front window smashed last summer. But there are signs of improvement lately. On West at least, many of the rentals are being converted back into single-family dwellings. My fiance and I have been looking at homes for sale in the area and our impression is you can get a whole lot of beautiful/potentially beautiful house for not a lot of money.
The one other thing we've found is insurance rates are comparatively high here. There have been two fires on our block alone in the past 8 months. Not sure if there's a correlation.
How have you found your experience on Steven?