With laneway suites permitted as-of-right across the entirety of Toronto, the City is now looking to other forms of accessory dwelling units and other ways to increase the supply of rental housing. The next frontier is likely to be something that the City is broadly referring to as garden suites. And the timing is likely to be as early as next summer. Here's how they're defining it (taken from this recent report):

Garden Suites are sometimes referred to by other names, such as “coach houses”, “tiny
homes”, and even “granny flats”. However they are all effectively the same idea – a
detached accessory dwelling unit generally located in the rear yard of a detached
house, semi-detached house, townhouse, or other low-rise dwelling. It is generally
smaller in scale, functioning as a separate rental housing unit. Garden Suites are similar
in form and function to Laneway Suites, which are currently permitted across the City in
all low-rise residential zones in the city-wide Zoning By-law, 569-2013. To avoid any
confusion between these terms, the City is considering all types of detached-accessory dwelling-unit to be a Garden Suite, for the purpose of this review, with the exception of a
Laneway Suite, which is already permitted and defined within the Zoning By-law.

The above report will be going to Planning and Housing Committee on December 8, 2020. The goals are to kickstart the public consultation process and to come up with the necessary recommendations to permit garden suites by the second quarter of 2021. Like laneway suites, they are expected to be as-of-right. That means straight to building permit. No variances (and contentious Committee of Adjustment meetings) required.

This is great news and I'm looking forward to seeing garden suites become a reality in 2021. For more information about what's happening on December 8th, click here.

Netflix has a new docuseries out about Latin American street food. I watched two episodes of it last night. The first was about a chef from Buenos Aires, Argentina and the second was about a chef -- named Dona Suzana -- from Salvador, Brazil. Even if you aren't necessarily into food shows, it's a good way to remind yourself just how much you probably miss traveling right now.

The story of Dona Suzana is an interesting one. Before opening her restaurant, she was doing laundry in order to make ends meet. Then at one point, the City of Salvador came to her community in order to undertake a large construction project. They needed someone to cook food for the construction workers and so they asked her if she would do it.

Since she had always dreamed of being a chef, she jumped at the opportunity and took out a loan to buy everything she needed in order to fit out her kitchen. She cooked for the workers and everyone loved the food. But she never ended up getting paid. They stiffed her.

That turned her off cooking for a bit and it was not until a trio of graffiti artists were working in her community and looking for a place to eat that she tried her hand at it again. They offered to pay her in advance and persuaded her to make them something. She agreed and the food was a huge hit.

In fact, the group of artists loved the food so much that they made her a sign with the name "RéRestaurante" (titled this way because Dona has a stutter) and began sharing photos of her dishes on social media. All of a sudden she had people showing up at her door. And today she has people from all around the world showing up at her door.

This is a wonderful success story. But I think it also says something about land use policies. As far as I can tell from the episode, she setup her restaurant at her place of residence -- a community along the waterfront where her husband fishes and where she uses his catches for her renowned dishes.

Here in Toronto, we are operating in an environment where if you try and setup a coffee shop in a residential "Neighbourhood" -- like, for example, Contra at 1028 Shaw Street -- you might spend a few years fighting with your neighbors and battling it out at LPAT hearings in order to get the appropriate permissions.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that we should do away with all zoning (or maybe I am). But I would like to draw your attention to this contrast. Because one has to wonder whether RéRestaurante Dona Suzana would exist today and be known around the world had the barriers to entry not been so low for her. Of course, had there been more rules, maybe she wouldn't have gotten stiffed the first time around.

Either way, I am currently in the market for some dende oil.

Photo by Milo Miloezger on Unsplash

Building on yesterday's post about inclusionary zoning, below is a telling diagram from the Urban Land Institute showing which areas of Portland can support new development and which areas cannot. To create this map, ULI looked at achievable rents in each US census block to determine, quite simply, where rents will cover the cost of new development (all types of construction).

However, in their models they are also assuming a land value of $0. And typically people want you to pay them money when you buy their land. So in all likelihood, this map is overstating the amount of blue -- that being land where new development is feasible.

But it does tell you something about developer margins. A lot of people seem to assume that the margins on new developments are so great that things like inclusionary zoning can simply be "absorbed" without impacting overall feasibility. The reality is that there are large swaths in most cities where development is never going to happen even if you were to start handing out free land.

This map is also helpful at illustrating some of the impacts of IZ. If you assume that rents are the highest in the center of the city and that they fall off as you move outward, then the outer edge of the above blue area is going to be where development is only marginally feasible. And so any new cost imposed on development would naturally start to uniformly eat away at the blue feasible area -- that is, until rents rise enough to offset it.

Of course, this is a simplified mapping. Land usually costs money. Land values might also be highest in the center and fall off as you move outward, or there could be pockets of high-cost land. There may be more price elasticity in certain sub-markets compared to others. So the impacts of a new development cost may not play out as neatly as I outlined above.

Regardless, there will be impacts, which is why I find this map telling even if it isn't fully accurate or up to date. Maybe some of you will as well.