i.            Background

The City of Toronto has a program for apartment building evaluations and audits:

https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/housing-shelter/rental-housing-standards/apartment-building-standards/rentsafeto-for-building-owners/rentsafeto-building-evaluations-and-audits/

Furthermore, Chapter 354, Apartment Buildings of the Toronto Municipal Code requires owners to “develop and maintain a current state of good repair capital plan that consists of a list of the capital elements of the buildings and the frequency with which the elements will be replaced… This is similar to the reserve fund study requirements in the Condominium Act.”

https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2017/ls/bgrd/backgroundfile-101418.pdf

https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/municode/toronto-code-354.pdf

ii.            Recent Problems

Three recent incidents raise doubts about the efficacy of this program:

• Fire at 650 Parliament caused by electrical failure,
• Power outage at 260 Wellesley caused by a pipe burst flooding the electrical room, and
• Lack of hot water at Pell Street apartments due to an antiquated heating system.

iii.            Need for Action

This petition calls Toronto Council to take the following immediate action:

• Raise audit standards to include professional engineering reports for electrical, mechanical, and structural systems in apartment buildings;
• Require that good repair capital plans include professional engineering reports for electrical, mechanical, and structural systems in apartment buildings; and
• Require that individual property managers and property management companies in apartment buildings are licenced.

Both apartment building audits and capital plans involve the public interest. The purpose of the professional engineering reports would be to identify potential safety risks ahead of time and prevent similar situations like those in 650 Parliament and 260 Wellesley from re-occurring. The petition also seeks to raise the oversight in apartment buildings by requiring property managers to be licenced similarly to provisions under the Condominium Act.

iv.            Credits

Picture by SimonP

Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en 

v.            Please Support this Petition

I urge everyone to please sign and share.