Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) Complaint Trend Data and Related Recommendations

The Issue

In each of the past five years, more people have complained to Ombudsman Toronto about the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (“TCHC”) than any other City organization within our scope.

This report responds to requests from both TCHC management and its Board of Directors to learn more about complaints the Ombudsman receives about TCHC.

What We Found

Many of the complaints Ombudsman Toronto receives about TCHC are premature, meaning that the complainant has not exhausted TCHC’s internal complaints process before contacting Ombudsman Toronto. This is because until recently, TCHC had no robust complaints process for tenants. Even now, TCHC has poorly publicized the process for making a complaint and many tenants do not know about it.

Our data also show that in cases where Ombudsman Toronto investigated the issues a tenant’s complaint raised, we most often found that poor communication by TCHC resulted in unfairness.

Our Recommendations

The Ombudsman recommends that:

• The Board should satisfy itself that TCHC management has developed and executed a detailed plan to effectively publicize its new internal complaints process to all tenants, residents, staff and members of the public who interact with TCHC by June 1, 2020.
• The Board should satisfy itself that TCHC management has a plan to provide all employees with training about providing good public service, which includes communicating with tenants, residents and members of the public in a transparent, fair and timely way. TCHC management should develop this plan by June 1, 2020, and execute it by December 31, 2020.

The City’s Response

TCHC management accepts these recommendations and has responded with a plan to implement them.