Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

No more floor space index maximums

I am positive that it had absolutely nothing to do with this post about fourplex feasibility, but I was happy to receive this notice in the mail yesterday:

It is a public meeting notice for the City of Toronto’s proposed multiplex policies (defined as duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes). And as you can see from the highlighted section, they’re looking, among other things, to make this form of housing exempt from floor space index maximums.

Good.

I don’t like this “where applicable” business, but I’m going to conveniently ignore that for now and just say that this is positive. Removing density maximums is a mandatory ingredient for helping to make this type of housing feasible.

No FSI maximums. No DCs. And let’s modernize how HST is charged on new rental housing.