Tag: laneway housing

• The year of the laneway

  Earlier this week, Metro News published an article saying that it’s going to be a big year for laneways in Toronto:

  “2016 is going to be the year where the evolution of our laneways lands at the forefront of our public realm strategy,” said Downtown Yonge BIA chair Mark Garner, who’s heading up the revitalization of O’Keefe Lane near Ryerson University.

  In addition to the Downtown Yonge BIA, much of this is being spearheaded by the non-profit group, The Laneway Project. This year they are expected to unveil plans for the revitalization of 3 laneways in the city – one of which is right in my backyard.

  I have a lot of respect for what The Laneway Project, the Downtown Yonge BIA, and others are doing in support of rethinking our laneways. And so today I just wanted to publicly thank them for their efforts. Thank you 🙂

  2016.01.06

• Vancouver approves first laneway apartments in the West End

  It’s no secret that Vancouver is way out in front of Toronto and many other cities when it comes to laneway housing. 

  Good luck trying to get a laneway house approved in Toronto. They’re only allowed under rare circumstances where there is already an existing house in the lane and/or you’re willing to fight it all the way to the province.

  But in Vancouver, it’s a different story. And they’ve even taken it a step further according to this recent Globe and Mail article by Frances Bula. The city recently approved small scale laneway apartments in the West End:

  “The city, which created the possibility for laneway apartments when it approved a new West End plan last year, has approved the first four buildings with 47 units in total. Three are in this particular alley between Nelson and Comox on either side of Cardero, around the corner from Cardero Bottega and Firehall No. 6. Others are in the pipeline. Many more are expected.
  

  They’re the first of a new kind of infill that planners hope will produce 1,000 new small homes in this popular downtown neighbourhood.”

  Here’s a rendering from the article to give you an idea of what these laneway apartments might look like:

  

  Readers of this blog have argued that Toronto doesn’t need laneway housing. There’s enough room for intensification elsewhere. 

  But what is clear to me is that Toronto is continuing to build less and less ground-related housing. There’s little to no room for that. And what is left of our low-rise stock is becoming increasingly unaffordable.

  So if we believe that social diversity is important for building a great city – which I do – then I think it behooves us to figure out how to not only increase the supply of new housing, but also increase its diversity. This is something Andrés Duany argued for in yesterday’s video post.

  The biggest hurdle is community opposition. But below is how one of the neighbours in Vancouver responded to the proposed laneway apartments. He gets it.

  “Dean Malone, who lives across the street from one of Mr. Sangha’s three projects, took the trouble to go to city hall to support it because the laneway apartments provide a way of creating new housing that isn’t a tower and isn’t a luxury development.”

  What this also does is allow the private sector to do more before the public sector needs to step in with affordable housing subsidies. I believe that laneway housing will help, but not solve, the affordable housing problem happening in most of our cities. 

  But every little bit helps. And this is one solution that many cities are simply ignoring.

  2015.12.03

• Housing completions in Toronto from 1996 to 2014

  Whenever I read studies that cite census data, I’m often left feeling like the data is out-of-date. 

  Five years – which is how often Canada conducts its national census – is a long time. Somebody could move to this country for school, complete a 4-year degree, and then leave, and we wouldn’t even pick it up in our data.

  Thankfully, we’ve at least reinstated the long-form census for next year. Here are the questions, if you’re curious.

  But all of this is a digression. 

  This morning I read through a housing report that the City of Toronto published in October of this year. It’s about housing trends. And I wanted to share the below chart that covers housing completions for the period of 1996 to 2014. Keep in mind that this is for the City of Toronto, and not the Greater Toronto Area.

  

  What it shows is that over this 18 year period, 78% of all housing completions in this city have been either low-rise or high-rise condominiums/apartments. The remaining 22% is a mix of detached and semi-detached houses and townhouses.

  However, this 22% is an average. 

  Detached and semi-detached housing completions declined from 22% in the 1996-2001 period to 10% a decade later. And row and townhouses declined from 16% to 6% during this same period.

  At the same time, “many” of the housing units in this 22% were actually replacing existing and older housing stock. That is, according to the report, many were “knock-downs” and rebuilds. In these cases, it means that the completions actually do not represent net new housing units. So in reality, the supply of new single-family housing is even lower than it appears in the chart above.

  When you look at all of this, it should come as no surprise to you that our current combination of low interest rates and low supply has been leading to huge price increases on the single-family side of the market.

  And it’s for this reason that I believe Toronto will eventually start to look towards allowing more low-rise intensification. Laneway housing, as one example, would represent virtually 100% new ground-related housing in already built up areas. Where else are we going to find that kind of housing opportunity?

  So in my view, it is a question of when, not if, this will happen.

  2015.11.21

• Living minimally

  

  “The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”
  – Lin Yutang
  

  Yesterday I posted the above photo on social media with the caption: 

  “This year I decided to go ALL OUT for Halloween.” 

  A friend then responded and said: 

  “A minimalist does Halloween. Love it.”

  I’ve been called a minimalist many times before. And it is certainly something that I think about. Oftentimes I feel like life is a constant battle against physical and mental clutter. But that the more you can rid yourself of that clutter, the happier and freer you will feel.

  It’s why I scan most of my paperwork into Evernote and then throw out the hard copies. It’s why I tend to wear a lot of white dress shirts and black t-shirts – it keeps life simple and reduces decision making. And it’s one of the reasons I’m so attracted to laneway houses and small spaces. I don’t think most of us need as much home as we think we do.

  If this is something that also interests you, I recommend checking out a blog called The Minimalists. I just recently subscribed to them.

  2015.11.01

• Make Way for Laneway

  I was speaking with a friend this morning and he told me that he had a Pavlovian association between me and laneways. That made me happy. 

  If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ve heard me go on and on about the great potential of laneways and laneway housing (accessory dwelling units) in Toronto, as well as in other cities around the world.

  So I won’t do that today. Instead, I’m going to link to a report that was just released by the Pembina Institute called Make Way for Laneway: Providing more housing options for the Greater Toronto Area.

  The report is obviously about Toronto, but there’s no reason that the lessons and ideas won’t also apply to your city. So I would encourage you to give it a read.

  For those of you who have emailed me about my own laneway house, the project is still on hold. And it will likely remain that way until the city becomes a bit more accepting of this housing typology. Hopefully that will happen soon.

  2015.10.23

• The impact of laneway housing in Vancouver

  In 2009, Vancouver created policy and legalized laneway homes. (If you’re not up on laneway housing, click here. I’ve written too much about this topic.)

  Since then, the number of laneway homes built in Vancouver has steadily increased to the point where roughly 350 new homes are built every year. 

  Here’s a chart I found showing the number of laneway home building permits issued in Vancouver since 2009 (the year to date number for 2015 is up to and including June):

  

  This is pretty interesting in its own right.

  But as soon as I saw this chart I started wondering how these numbers fit into the overall new home construction landscape. So I decided to dig up the City of Vancouver’s Statement of Building Permits Issued for June 2015.

  As the chart above shows, the number of laneway dwelling units built (well, permits issued) was 221 as of June 2015. But what’s really fascinating is that this numbers exceeds the number of building permits issued for single family dwellings, which was only 192!

  Also super interesting is the significant spread in building permit value. 

  For single family dwellings, the total value was $156,086,861 (or $812,952 per dwelling unit). On the other hand, for laneway dwellings the total value was $36,478,785 (or $165,062 per unit).

  Now to be fair, if you add single family dwellings with a secondary suite into the mix, you get a total count of 608 new dwelling units (as of June 2015). But at 221 new units, laneway dwellings still make up a meaningful portion of the new construction market.

  So while laneway houses might seem fringe for Toronto and other cities right now, they’re really not that fringe. In fact the numbers above start to show that they can be a viable source of new and relatively affordable single family housing.

  Eventually other cities will realize this too.

  2015.08.12

• Laneways and ravines

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  I have a new mission for this summer: To explore more of Toronto’s ravines.

  Last week I had a fascinating conversation with Steve Heuchert of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA). Most developers in this city would probably cringe when they hear those words. Because often when the TRCA gets involved it means your project is about to get more complicated.

  But if you take a step back and look at the larger city building equation, our ravines are a remarkable and unique feature of the Toronto area landscape.

  And unless you live near one or are fortunate enough to have a home that backs onto one, I suspect that for many of us this city’s ravines are a somewhat forgotten layer of the urban fabric. We drive by them. We pass through them on the subway. But they don’t really register in the way that they should.

  And so if you think about it, our ravines actually share many similarities with our laneways (alleys). We know they exist, but we could be doing a lot more to truly celebrate and integrate them into the rest of the city. They are missed opportunities.

  The challenge with our ravines though is finding the right balance between preservation and increased usage. But this isn’t something that a great landscape architect couldn’t help solve.

  So today’s thoughts are: How do we increase ravine awareness? How do we improve access and expand their uses? How might we craft our ravines to become an interconnected open, green, and cultural network within the city? And how do we better position the ravines as part of Toronto’s overall city brand?

  If you’re interested in this topic, check out this talk that Steve Heuchert did last year. It was part of an event that Megan Torza of DTAH organized called RavinePortal.

  2015.07.29

• The Laneway Project is looking for a Fundraising Coordinator

  

  Speed Bump by Jason Cook on 500px

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  As many of you know, I advise a non-profit called The Laneway Project. The goal of the organization is to change Toronto’s relationship with its laneways and help create laneway friendly policies and procedures.

  It’s something that I’m incredibly passionate about. I believe that our laneways represent a missed opportunity, both from a public space standpoint and a real estate standpoint. And I’m confident that Toronto will eventually figure that out.

  If you’re also interested in this space, now is your chance to get involved. The Laneway Project is currently looking for a Fundraising Coordinator to help develop its operational funding strategy and to help with actual fundraising.

  Since it’s still early days, this is a volunteer position (with an honorarium). But it’s a great opportunity to get involved early with a passionate group of city builders. So I hope you’ll consider applying. Click here for the full job description.

  2015.06.23

• The missing middle will come, eventually

  Yesterday Lloyd Alter of Treehugger wrote a great rebuttal to my post about homes for families. His argument was that I missed a whole world of building typologies between single family homes and apartments. (Something that architect and urban planner Daniel Parolek calls “The Missing Middle”.)

  Now he’s absolutely right. I didn’t mention it – other than provide an option in the survey for townhomes. And he’s right that it’s a tremendous opportunity for cities looking to increase housing supply and improve affordability.

  But the reason I didn’t mention it in my survey is because, here in Toronto, we’re not very good at that middle scale.

  I previously wrote a post talking about Toronto’s 3 stages of intensification. It went from high-rise to mid-rise, and then to low-rise intensification. And my argument was that we’re still in and figuring out the mid-rise scale. (There are challenges at this scale, but that deserves a separate post.)

  Eventually though, I think we will get to low-rise intensification. And that will cover off many of the building typologies that Lloyd is talking about: duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and, my personal favorite, laneway houses.

  This, of course, isn’t the case in every city. Many cities, such as Montreal, have a strong history of neighborhood-scaled apartments. Lloyd points that out in his article. But that’s not the case here in Toronto.

  In fact, Toronto’s Official Plan explicitly designates these low-rise “Neighborhoods” as areas that are stable and should not see much intensification. And it was a great selling point for the Places to Grow Act: intensification here, but not there.

  But I think this will change. Not because I’m a real estate developer and I think it should change, but because our current arrangement is causing a dramatic erosion of affordability at the low-rise/ground-related housing scale.

  If it were up to me, and it most certainly is not, I would start with laneway housing. It’s a great way to intensify low-rise neighbourhoods without altering the character of the streets.

  If you live in a single family neighborhood, I would especially love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. 

  2015.06.03

• Red stripes, iceberg homes, and laneway houses

  This morning I was reading a CityLab article talking about a homeowner in London’s wealthy Kensington neighborhood who painted her house in red stripes after the city and her neighbors derailed her renovation plans. I’m thinking it is supposed to be symbolic of government “red tape.”

  She had hoped to add a two-floor “mega-basement” to her home, which is curiously enough a thing in London due to how restrictive traditional home expansions can be. Locally they are called “iceberg homes.”

  What’s interesting about this phenomenon is that it shows you how far people will go to find and/or create the space they want in the neighborhoods they want to live in. Kensington is an incredibly wealthy area and so one has to assume that she is not without other housing options.

  As another example, here’s how the article describes her house:

  The candy-striped home in question, for example, is actually a mews house, a kind of outbuilding running along an alley behind a great house, originally intended as a place to tidy horses, carriages and maids away from the main residence.

  So not only did she want to create an “iceberg home”, but she wanted to do so in what was previously a back alley. In Toronto, this home would be called a laneway house.

  What this tells me is that as real estate values rise, people will naturally start to seek out overlooked spaces to repurpose. They will look for some way to carve out a home. And it’s for that reason that I think laneway housing is an inevitable outcome here in Toronto.

  2015.05.11