What to know
- Tenants at a Toronto apartment building have been without heat since the Easter long weekend due to a boiler system failure
- The property manager says repairs are underway but could take several more weeks to complete
- Residents are relying on space heaters, raising concerns as temperatures fluctuate, sometimes below freezing
- Councillor Josh Matlow is calling on the city’s RentSafe program to take action, saying the issue is recurring and “completely unacceptable”
Tenants in a Toronto apartment building are sounding the alarm after going weeks without heat, and now a city councillor is urging for municipal intervention.
Residents at 64 St. Clair Ave. W. have been without heat since the Easter long weekend, according to property manager Cherishome Living.
In an email statement to Now Toronto, spokesperson Danny Roth said that, upon inspection, a key component of the building’s boiler system had failed and would need to be replaced.
However, the repair process is expected to take time.
“That would unfortunately take weeks to be resolved. That process is now ongoing, and we hope to have a better understanding of timelines and key target dates later next week,” Roth said.
The outage comes as temperatures across the city continue to fluctuate, with some dipping below freezing in recent days, raising concerns for tenants and local councillor Josh Matlow, who says this is not the first time residents have faced such conditions.
“It’s completely unacceptable. It just so happens that this is a building that I personally visited three years ago, the last time that the landlord left them with that heat, and I had to intervene and fight,” he said.
Matlow said “it was clear” at the time that the boiler system had issues, adding that the current situation should have been prevented.
“Rather, three years ago, than actually deal with the problem and replace or fix the boilers. They just put bandaids on it, and now they’re having another problem,” he said.
As a result, Matlow said he has asked the city’s RentSafe program to step in and take enforcement action against the landlord.
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“I want RentSafe, and I want the city, RentSafe, to put all the pressure and all the enforcement tools possible toward this landlord, to hold them to account,” he said.
Roth said tenants have been provided with space heaters as a temporary measure while repairs continue.
“Management is also performing health and wellness checks for our elderly or compromised residents on an ongoing basis,” Roth said.
Matlow maintains that this “could never happen again.”
“It’s really upsetting and frankly, unacceptable that they’ve allowed things to get so bad,” he said. “It took the tenants to ring your bells and speak, and for me to go public with this and put pressure on RentSafe to get this landlord to even do the fixes that they’re doing now.”
