I want to be clear here that the Building Management itself at 70 Jerome Cres is very good. The Building Managers and Supers are kind individuals who do work their fingers to the bone to hold the building together. For several months, our Building Managers were working alone as there were no Supers for the better part of 3 months. The circumstances as to why are unclear, but from my understanding there were new Supers every few weeks, but they kept on leaving.
This report targets Effort Trust itself and it's piss poor property mangement.
Currently at 70 Jerome Cres, there are a few items that need replacing that I would call critical;
- Elevators - the original elevators are still inside the building. Over the past few months, tenants have had to deal with one or both elevators going offline due to mechanical issues. Several tenants have been dropped several floors in malfunctioning cars. The replacement of these elevators was supposed to begin in November 2015. However, Effort Trust informed building management that they hadn't ordered the new cars and now there wasn't any avaliable. The elevator repairman is making a boatload off of the buildign as he is called in regularly...sometimes three times a day.
- Parking Decks - Currently, 60 Jerome's parking deck is so bad that it's close to condemnation. As a result, Effort Trust has begun a 3 year project to restore all the decks. This would be an amazing thing if they hadn't paved over every square inch of green space in the complex to accomidate the displaced cars. As a form of "parking management" the cost of parking has doubled in one year. It used to be a relatively affordable $20. Now it is $40. Combined with the inflation on rent and the cost of utilities, it makes this complex out of reach for anyone making less than $30K a year.
- Windows - The winters are incredibly harsh as the windows are original and nearly all of them leak to some degree. We would take blankets and tape to our windows in the effort to keep the warmth in (which by the way is centrally controlled). In the summer, if you have a window AC, you again must seal all the windows with tape and other insulators or risk throwing coins out the window.
- In Unit Fuse Boxes - We've lost power more than once due to our fuse box. It is the old plug style fuses and some are loose. Due to our tenant agreement, we can't really touch the box. Therefore we have to deal with the occasional power outage.
Effort Trust is a cheap company who will cut corners to save money. As a result, Jerome Cres is falling apart, but costs a lot to live at. We currently pay less because we were grandfathered in when parking was $20 and rent for a 1 Bedroom Jr was $750. Now the smallest apartment is $779/mth and parking $40. At 610 ft2, the 1 Bedroom Jr. is hardly worth $819/mth to live at. Especially giving the horrific property management. Building Management clearly works hard to try to keep things together, but it's not enough. The work orders have piled so high on his desk that I'm not sure they will actually see to the ones I have put in for various broken items in our apartment until after we move out.