Earlier this year I wrote about the California housing bill (827) intended to dramatically increase housing supply around transit stations all across the state. Well that bill was rejected last month and the Los Angeles Times wrote this post post-mortem explaining why and how it went wrong. Their argument is that it came down to opposition from low-income residents who feared that an increase in housing supply would lead to greater displacement.
On a related note, the Official Plan Amendment and Zoning By-law Amendment that would permit laneway suites in Toronto went to Community Council this week. They voted to defer the decision for a month. Only 3 of 13 councillors voted to pass the proposal, despite there being 185 letters of support and only 4 letters of opposition. For more information on what the hell happened, check out
Earlier this year I wrote about the California housing bill (827) intended to dramatically increase housing supply around transit stations all across the state. Well that bill was rejected last month and the Los Angeles Times wrote this post post-mortem explaining why and how it went wrong. Their argument is that it came down to opposition from low-income residents who feared that an increase in housing supply would lead to greater displacement.
On a related note, the Official Plan Amendment and Zoning By-law Amendment that would permit laneway suites in Toronto went to Community Council this week. They voted to defer the decision for a month. Only 3 of 13 councillors voted to pass the proposal, despite there being 185 letters of support and only 4 letters of opposition. For more information on what the hell happened, check out
Well that was last summer and this is this summer.
On May 2, 2018 – which just so happens to be my birthday – Toronto and East York Community Council will consider a staff report for a City-initiated Official Plan Amendment and Zoning By-law Amendment that would permit laneway suites in the Toronto & East York District.
This report recommends establishing a planning framework to permit laneway suites on lands within the Toronto and East York District that are designated as Neighbourhoods by amending both the Official Plan and City-wide Zoning By-law.
A second unit can take many forms but is generally considered to be subordinate to the primary dwelling unit on a lot. Second units are an important part of the City’s rental housing stock. Laneway suites are one form of second unit.
This report contains a detailed planning rationale for the introduction and regulation of laneway suites within the Toronto and East York area and discusses the policy implications and intent of proposed performance standards and criteria.
These performance standards and criteria intend that laneway suites will provide a new form of ground-related, rental and extended family housing that will fit appropriately within the scale of established Neighbourhoods, and limit their impact on the existing physical character, while contributing to the growth of the City’s rental housing stock.
Chris Bateman does some terrific sleuthing in the Globe and Mail this week to determine that the girl pictured in the below photo, dated May 15, 1913, is Dora (Dorothy) Cooperman – daughter of Morris Cooperman, a clothing presser.
Well that was last summer and this is this summer.
On May 2, 2018 – which just so happens to be my birthday – Toronto and East York Community Council will consider a staff report for a City-initiated Official Plan Amendment and Zoning By-law Amendment that would permit laneway suites in the Toronto & East York District.
This report recommends establishing a planning framework to permit laneway suites on lands within the Toronto and East York District that are designated as Neighbourhoods by amending both the Official Plan and City-wide Zoning By-law.
A second unit can take many forms but is generally considered to be subordinate to the primary dwelling unit on a lot. Second units are an important part of the City’s rental housing stock. Laneway suites are one form of second unit.
This report contains a detailed planning rationale for the introduction and regulation of laneway suites within the Toronto and East York area and discusses the policy implications and intent of proposed performance standards and criteria.
These performance standards and criteria intend that laneway suites will provide a new form of ground-related, rental and extended family housing that will fit appropriately within the scale of established Neighbourhoods, and limit their impact on the existing physical character, while contributing to the growth of the City’s rental housing stock.
Chris Bateman does some terrific sleuthing in the Globe and Mail this week to determine that the girl pictured in the below photo, dated May 15, 1913, is Dora (Dorothy) Cooperman – daughter of Morris Cooperman, a clothing presser.
Dora is standing in front of 3 wood-framed “rear houses” located behind 21 Elizabeth Street in an area known then as St. John’s Ward, or simply, The Ward. Behind her is City Hall, which we refer to today as Old City Hall.
If you’re familiar with Toronto, it shouldn’t take you long to figure out that she is standing in what is today the middle of Nathan Phillips Square in front of (new) City Hall.
The Ward no longer exists today, but as far as neighborhoods go its history is one of the most interesting. It was a high-density and mixed-use precinct that served as an important landing ground for successive waves of immigrants until it was deemed a slum and ultimately cleared. I wonder what it would look like today had it remained. Perhaps a bit like Kensington Market.
It housed the Irish fleeing the Great Famine in the 19th century and was the center of Toronto’s Jewish community until the 1920s. The Cooperman family came from Kiev and identified as Jewish.
There are so many interesting aspects to the above photograph. Everything from Dora’s pose to the juxtaposition between her surroundings and the grand (old) City Hall in the background. (Sidebar: I would like to try and recreate this same perspective. Would anyone like to model?)
I also wonder why the city required a report to wake them up to the squalor that was living out in the Ward when they could have, presumably, just looked out their west facing windows.
In 1911, Charles Hastings and Arthur Goss published what Batemen describes as a “landmark report that stunned civic officials, who had long ignored the poverty on their doorstep.” Hastings was the city’s medical officer of health, and Goss was the’s city first official photographer and author of Dora’s above portrait.
One of the interesting things that Bateman explains about this report – and this is really the point of today’s post – is that it supposedly called out one particular housing typology as being highly problematic: rear houses.
These were houses that existed off the main street and could only be accessed via a laneway, like the one Dora is standing in. Today we would call them laneway houses. And so this report is evidence of over a century of anxiety around this particular housing type.
It is obvious why overcrowding would have been deemed a serious problem at the start of the 20th century, but now one has to wonder how influential this report may have been in establishing the tone around these “rear houses.”
Whatever the case may be, Dora’s story is an example of the role that this typology has played in housing people of modest means throughout this city’s history. It is also interesting, but perhaps not a coincidence, that affordability continues to be a part of the pitch around laneway housing and laneway suites.
Dora lived in a laneway house.
Dora is standing in front of 3 wood-framed “rear houses” located behind 21 Elizabeth Street in an area known then as St. John’s Ward, or simply, The Ward. Behind her is City Hall, which we refer to today as Old City Hall.
If you’re familiar with Toronto, it shouldn’t take you long to figure out that she is standing in what is today the middle of Nathan Phillips Square in front of (new) City Hall.
The Ward no longer exists today, but as far as neighborhoods go its history is one of the most interesting. It was a high-density and mixed-use precinct that served as an important landing ground for successive waves of immigrants until it was deemed a slum and ultimately cleared. I wonder what it would look like today had it remained. Perhaps a bit like Kensington Market.
It housed the Irish fleeing the Great Famine in the 19th century and was the center of Toronto’s Jewish community until the 1920s. The Cooperman family came from Kiev and identified as Jewish.
There are so many interesting aspects to the above photograph. Everything from Dora’s pose to the juxtaposition between her surroundings and the grand (old) City Hall in the background. (Sidebar: I would like to try and recreate this same perspective. Would anyone like to model?)
I also wonder why the city required a report to wake them up to the squalor that was living out in the Ward when they could have, presumably, just looked out their west facing windows.
In 1911, Charles Hastings and Arthur Goss published what Batemen describes as a “landmark report that stunned civic officials, who had long ignored the poverty on their doorstep.” Hastings was the city’s medical officer of health, and Goss was the’s city first official photographer and author of Dora’s above portrait.
One of the interesting things that Bateman explains about this report – and this is really the point of today’s post – is that it supposedly called out one particular housing typology as being highly problematic: rear houses.
These were houses that existed off the main street and could only be accessed via a laneway, like the one Dora is standing in. Today we would call them laneway houses. And so this report is evidence of over a century of anxiety around this particular housing type.
It is obvious why overcrowding would have been deemed a serious problem at the start of the 20th century, but now one has to wonder how influential this report may have been in establishing the tone around these “rear houses.”
Whatever the case may be, Dora’s story is an example of the role that this typology has played in housing people of modest means throughout this city’s history. It is also interesting, but perhaps not a coincidence, that affordability continues to be a part of the pitch around laneway housing and laneway suites.
