What’s up with all the crumbling walls?

In our beautiful and overall tidy neighborhood, it’s been hard not to notice the crumbling stonework around the main entrance of our building. The stone walls around the 100 Wellesley property and leading up to the main entrance have been in need for repair for a couple of years now, with half-collapsed walls and loosely laid stone slabs.

If you’re one of the residents that inquired about this issue early on, you might have been told by our office staff that “it will be done soon” or that “they are waiting for materials”, in the meanwhile, the answer has changed to “don’t worry, our new development will solve all of that”. By this the staff is referring to the development project proposing a 10-story infill that will wrap around our current building. Construction of this development would solve the problem as it would remove all the green space in front of the building, including the old stone walls. However, the proposal has been already rejected by the city in its current form, and if an appeal process were to go through, it could take years.

So CAPREIT does not want to invest in basic repairs for our building because there might be major construction in a couple of years, but is that really fair to the current tenants? It is not only that it looks shabby, it is also unsafe. And it unfortunately reflects CAPREIT’s general approach to repairs, one of the major dissatisfaction points in our recent tenant-satisfaction survey. CAPREIT advertises to “treat our residents with the utmost respect and strive to meet their needs well beyond their rental apartment”1, and we would love to see some of

that respect reflected in the compliance with basic repairs that affect both living quality and safety, inside and outside of our rental units.

As always, your tenant association is working hard on bringing these issues to CAPREIT’s attention and we are always open for feedback, input and questions from all our tenants.

1. Quote retrieved from the CAPREIT homepage at https://www.caprent.com/about-capreit/ on 2018-July-02