Fall Updates from Circle
Over the last six months, our staff have been busy managing the transfer of over 580 homes from Toronto Community Housing to Circle. We are proud to be the new non-profit owner of these homes, and our staff look forward to getting to know our Tenants better in the coming months. Below are a few important updates about what’s coming up for Circle Tenants this season.
Preventative maintenance on furnaces: Circle has contracted two companies – Enercare, and Reliance Home Comfort – to perform annual preventative maintenance on the furnaces in all of Circle’s homes. This maintenance is being done to ensure that all furnaces are functioning properly as we approach the winter weather, and to assess the condition of the equipment for longer-term planning. Representatives from Enercare or Reliance will be contacting Tenants directly to schedule the appointments. We thank our Tenants for their cooperation with this essential maintenance service.
Roofing Maintenance: Circle will be continuing to provide semi-annual preventative maintenance on roofing – which includes gutter cleaning and minor repairs - as TCHC has done. For this work, Circle has contracted the companies TorCan, Cordeiro, and Triumph. In the coming weeks, a service crew from one of these companies will visit Tenants’ homes to perform the necessary work. Crews will be performing exterior work only.
Home Inspections Update: Most Tenants who transferred on June 1st, and July 29th have had their homes inspected by Circle staff during the past six months. Home inspections for Tenants who transferred on September 1st and September 30th are upcoming. We know that many Tenants who have had their homes inspected are waiting to hear from Circle about what happens next, and we apologize for the lack of updates on this front. Over the last few months, Circle’s home inspectors have found a huge number of big and small issues in our homes. Currently, our staff are putting together a comprehensive plan for how to tackle everything. As they review each inspection, staff are slotting all the major and minor issues that were identified into the appropriate phases of our short- and long-term renovation plans for the entire group of over 550 homes. Staff are also working on making the findings from each inspection easier to understand, so that Tenants who are interested can access more details about their home inspections and ask staff questions. We will share an update on our website as soon as possible about when this information will be available to Tenants. In that update, we will also provide more details about our plan to bring all of the homes into a state of good repair.
A note on Tenant Work Orders: As staff add the results of each home inspection into our system, Circle is creating Work Orders (WOs) for all issues that were identified during the inspections. Work on urgent matters and many of the minor issues is already underway. However, if there is an urgent issue in your home that you have not received an update about since your inspection, please submit a new WO with our maintenance department to prevent delays. You can submit a WO using Circle’s Tenant Portal, by email at maintenance@circlelandtrust.ca, or by phone at 437-781-8432 ext 4. If you haven’t had your home inspection yet, please submit new WOs for urgent issues only: All non-urgent work will be identified during your home inspection, and Work Orders will be created at that point.
Tenant Portal: For Tenants who haven’t already done so, please consider signing up for Circle’s Tenant Portal. The Portal will make the process of submitting and tracking maintenance requests easier. Information for how to sign up can be found at our website here: https://circlelandtrust.ca/sign-up-for-our-new-tenant-portal/
