Toronto Community Housing Corporation’s Medical and Safety At Risk Priority Transfer Process For Tenants: Update On Implementation of Investigation Recommendations

What Happened

On January 31, 2018, Toronto City Council passed motions to accept Ombudsman Toronto’s Investigation into Toronto Community Housing Corporation’s Medical and Safety at Risk Priority Transfer Process For Tenants report and to direct TCHC and the City to implement our recommendations. Council also passed a motion asking the Ombudsman to report to City Council in the first quarter of 2019 on TCHC’s progress in implementing the recommendations in the investigation report.

Our Investigation

Our update report details implementation challenges and solutions under the following categories:

• Creating a clear process to handle exceptional cases
• Challenges finding an effective way to confirm serious ongoing threat
• High volume of applications at introduction of the new priority transfer system
• Need to clarify how TCHC evaluates applications and communicates its reasons for decisions
• Low Acceptance Rates

What We Found

TCHC has directly addressed all of Ombudsman Toronto’s Investigation recommendations in a timely way and is responding with reasonable care to challenges during implementation.

TCHC management set tight timelines for the creation and implementation of the new program and have met them. We commend them for this.