My Experiences at 111 Davisville Avenue, Toronto

These are my experiences and my experiences alone. These are solely my opinions, thoughts, experiences and views of living at 111 Davisville Avenue in Toronto.

So, I moved into the building in the summer of 2010. I was going to start grad school and I was looking forward to living close to downtown for a reasonable price. I signed my lease in May (or so) and was looking forward to my move in date.

Fast forward a few months and it's time to move in. I get my rental package and keys from the rental company and start moving stuff in. The apartment itself is sort of dirty and painted terribly, but I don't complain. I'm in New Apartment Bliss.

Here's the deal though. I signed a lease under one company and then the building got bought by another. So, when I make out my cheques, they come back to me. Because they gave me all the outdated information in my rental package. Wrong emergency numbers, wrong information about the super, wrong information about how they want to get paid. Uh, that seems like sloppy work to me, but I am determined to roll with the punches.

Over the months of living in my cute little apartment, the cracks start becoming apparent to me:

1.) My toilet backs up. I call the emergency line. The grumpy super comes up (ok, I get that it's after hours, but it WAS an emergency) and yells at me the entire time he's fixing my toilet. Uh, that was uncomfortable.

2.) My kitchen sink starts to leak. The drain pipe has a giant crack in it. I call to ask for a repair and the woman tells me, "can you just not use your sink for a week or so? We're really busy right now." Um... no. It is my kitchen sink. It's sort of important to my daily living of eating and doing dishes. So I camp out in the management office until it's fixed. Which, by the way, took the repair guy all of 10 minutes.

3.) I come back after a long weekend away to find that part of my bathroom wall has collapsed. Like, there is a very large hole and a mound of plaster on the floor. I can see the external wall of the hallway. What happened? I put a work order into the super's office. Nothing happens. I put a second work order in to the super. Nothing happens. I call the management office to report it. They say they will send someone up the very next day. No one comes. I go into the management office to make a formal report. Nothing is done. The city of Toronto inspectors come to the building to examine the units with needed repairs. They come to my unit and take photos of the hole. They say that they will send the report to the management office for immediate repair. Nothing happens. I go back to the management office and camp out for about 45 minutes basically doing what I can do get someone to finally do something. They tell me that they will "definitely send someone today to plaster the hole." Nothing happens. This goes on for almost TWO MONTHS before they send some guy up to my unit who spends an hour and a half plastering the wall while calling me "baby", "sweetie", "sexy" and telling me how hot I look before finally getting the hell out of my apartment. I report this behaviour and my extreme levels of discomfort to the management office. Nothing happens.

4.) The person in the unit below me likes to play super loud music at all hours of the night. I don't mind it during the day or up until 11pm or so, but at a certain point, I have to get some sleep. I call the security line. They tell me that 111 Davisville Avenue apartment doesn't pay for security, so they can't send a guard. The next day, I report this to the management office. They tell me that they do pay for security and that someone must have been mistaken. The next night, the neighbour continues with the music. I call the security company and am told again that they do not pay for a security guard. I report this again to the management office. This continues for a few nights. Finally, the security company tells me that this building has paid for security.

5.) The elevators work, but usually only one works at a time. The others are frozen on or around the 12th floor while one elevator tries to service the entire building. I've gotten notices that they are being "repaired." My favourite is getting into an elevator with a resident who is clearly annoyed with the elevator situation. I've heard some choice words about the state of the building from people on many different floors. One very nice woman said she's lived in the building for years and is considering moving in with her son. "My daughter-in-law is a bit of a bitch, so she'll drive me nuts, but it will still be better than living in this dump!" In fairness, we did wait almost 10 minutes for an elevator, so I can see where her frustration came from. Oh, I've also seen able-bodied people try to pile in an elevator before people with physical disabilities and have held the door open until these jerks got their ass off the elevator and let the guy in the wheelchair in. Then I scolded them. This is how desperate the elevator situation has become, apparently. Granted, in the past week, I've noticed a slight improvement in elevator wait times.

6.) I will say that my unit is clean. No bugs or anything like that. +1

7.) The hot water was out for several days in the winter. I took some of the coldest showers of my life in January. Problems with the boiler or the pipes or something. (Edit: Hot water out again today, August 12, 2011.)

8.) The hot and cold water seem to need repairs a lot. I've received several notices that the water (either hot, cold or both) will be out for entire working days. They are on at night though. Just being repaired from 9-5.

9.) I've lived through the madness of trying to write assignments when the parking garage is being jackhammered. I invested in several sets of earplugs.

10.) Personally, I rarely do my laundry in this building. My clothes always came out sudsy and I find the prices to be outrageous. That said, I do appreciate the laundry cards rather than trying to always find coins.

11.) Visitor parking is pricy and monitored by the city's parking authority. You gotta pay, or you will get a ticket.

12.) I received my rental renewal notice. Rent is going up! Now, I expected a rent increase. The 2011 Rent Increase Guideline for Ontario is set at 0.7%. That's pretty low (lowest in 35 years, according to google), but it is great for the mass amounts of students, seniors and people with disabilities who live in this building and are generally on a fixed income. However, the rend in this building went up 4.9%! Uh, that seems drastically over the amount set by the guideline. Are they allowed to do that? Apparently they can apply for an increase if they make significant repairs. Ok, I can see that they painted the lobby and gave us key fobs instead of keys, but it still seems like a big jump to me. I guess putting off major repairs until everything broke is one way of saying they are making "significant repairs."

Overall, I loved my apartment. It was cute and cozy and just right for me. It's the management that drove me bananas.