Working Together to Find Solutions

Each year, we bring together residents, staff and the community to help Toronto Community Housing find solutions to the complex challenges we face each and every day.

Over the past few years, the same issues kept coming up: maintenance and repair, safety, and better tenant engagement. The focus this year was to come up with solutions to these challenges and to prioritize what we do first. These solutions must be measurable, realistic and in keeping with our mandate - to provide quality housing for low- and moderate-income households and to assist in the creation of community conditions that minimize risk and promote resiliency.

We hosted 10 community consultation sessions over four days in late October and early November of 2009. The ideas from these sessions will be used to help Toronto Community Housing develop the Community Management Plan, which will guide our work over the next three years.

Go to Your Priorities for a summary of the top priorities you told us to focus on for the next three years.

Go to What You Told Us to read the detailed comments that were gathered at the 10 consultation sessions.  

Next Steps 

The Community Management Plan will be drafted in the coming months. It will be a realistic plan that focuses on key priorities to make a difference in the lives of our residents, staff and community.  Please remember that not everything you told us will be included in the Community Management Plan. Your ideas will be part of a discussion to focus on what the key priorities are for 2010-2012. It is important that we focus our resources on those areas that will make the biggest difference in the lives of our residents, staff and community. 

There will be an opportunity to hear about the next phase of the Community Management Plan in the spring of 2010.

Meeting Evaluation

During each consultation participants were given the opportunity to complete an evaluation form. It asked a series of questions to help us better understand what people thought about the consultation format and content.

There were 400 respondents in total, which was about 40% of the total participants.

Survey results:

• 96% "agreed" or "somewhat agreed" that the small group discussions allowed their opinions to be heard.
• Of those that used the EasyTrac kiosk, 92% said it was a useful way of dealing with their service issues.
• 82% agreed that it was helpful to have staff, tenants and community partners in the same discussion group. 
• 70% said that staff on hand were able to address their concerns (25% indicated this was not applicable).

When asked what the "one thing" was that participants would do to improve the meeting, the majority felt that the meetings were "very helpful", "informative", "well-organized" and left many of the participants with the feeling that their opinions and concerns would be addressed in the future. Several comments also suggested that the meetings were a good forum for feedback and discussion.

The main opportunity for improvement was for a different, larger or less noisy venue to improve the flow of the meeting. Many participants also felt the meetings would be better if they were longer, more organized and more punctual. Some suggested the meetings be more structured and that the more information should be provided prior to the meeting date.

Thank you to everyone who gave us their input. All of this feedback will be incorporated into our planning for next year's CMP consultations.