July 2025
The term for all our board members has long expired but they have chosen not to hold an election.
Residents are treated as second class citizens by the management company and a majority are condo-landlords.
How do we fix things?
A. K.
(Letter has been edited for brevity.)
Response from Toronto Condo News
You have written twice of your concerns and spoken with me. So, prior to responding, I reviewed information on your corporation.
YCC 42 has a 10+ year history of problems involving the courts and Tribunal. This includes failure to hold condo elections and invalidating results of a legitimate election.
You identify problems with your management company, a condo board failing to hold elections and landlords overcharging for rent. Respectfully, I suggest that the problem relates to basic governance, owners unwilling to agree on how they want to address this issue, and utilizing tools and resources available to them.
Requesting, or requisitioning, a meeting of owners is an effective way to inform the board that certain issues are important or unacceptable to owners. Owners can require the board to implement changes if supported by a majority of owners. If one of the problems is that condo fees are too low, a fear of higher fees can make support for change difficult. If the problem is current directors, owners can replace one or all elected directors. This would require finding other volunteer directors acceptable to a majority of owners. If there are no suitable volunteers to serve as directors, the court can be petitioned to assign an administrator that would be paid for with condo fees.
My point here is that owners need to work together in determining exactly what they want to achieve. They can call an election if none is called by the board. They can requisition a meeting requiring a vote but this only passes when there is support from a majority of owners. The hard work involves getting a majority to agree on a single approach and to vote accordingly.
While solutions are known, it takes work to get there. Many want change but reconsider once they are aware of the costs – time and money – involved.
While I suspect this is not what you want to hear, owners working together is the only way to effectively resolve the myriad problems in your community.
