Tag: laneway suite

• FYI, new home coming soon

  This is not a post about laneway housing. Okay, it sort of is. But there’s a broader point to discuss. Recently, a local Toronto newspaper ran this article talking about how a bunch of people are upset that their neighbor is building an as-of-right garden suite. Here’s an excerpt:

  “The members of the community know that they can’t stop the building of this ‘garden suite’. However, they want to change the bylaw to ensure that future ‘garden suites’ can’t be built without community consultation and an environmental assessment,” said a news release from a number of residents in the area that was sent to Toronto media outlets including Beach Metro Community News last week.

  This raises some interesting questions.

  For one, what would be the purpose of this community consultation? Is it just a “Hey, I’m going to be building a garden suite” and then homeowners go do it exactly how they want anyway? Or, would it be an extensive community engagement process where homeowners would be expected to gather feedback, submit a report to the city, and consider design changes?

  And, would this apply to all low-rise housing? In other words, would all homeowners need to consultant their neighbors and do an environmental assessment before pulling a building permit? What if someone just wants to build a small extension or a shed? Or, are we only talking about laneway and garden suites?

  I’m not really sure what the exact intentions are here — besides delaying new housing — but I can tell you that it’s a terrible idea.

  Laneway and garden suites should never require community consultation and/or an environmental assessment. I mean, this is the whole point of allowing them as-of-right. It’s so you don’t have to do these things and you can go straight to a building permit. This is way too small of a housing type to burden with obstacles.

  In fact, the same is true of larger housing types. In my opinion, conventional mid-rise buildings should not have to go through a full rezoning and they should not have to consult with the community. We already know what these buildings look like. We know that they make for great homes. And yet they’re our most expensive housing type to build.

  Removing barriers (and reducing project durations) is a sure-fire way to make them cheaper. Especially in a higher interest rate environment.

  2024.03.20

• Laneway as front door

  Recently, I wrote about 4 predictions that I have for Toronto’s laneways. And one of them is what I refer to as a “market inversion.” What I mean by this is that I think we’ll start to see the laneway side of lots become more desirable than their traditional street frontages.

  Maybe it won’t be a universal thing, but I definitely think we’ll stop thinking about laneways as being the “rear” or “backside” of lots and just think of them as quieter and more intimate streets. Because here’s the thing, as more and more laneway houses get built, we are, in a lot of cases, removing parking at the same time. And so generally speaking, as time goes on, our laneways are going to become even more pedestrian-oriented by default.

  Now here’s a built example.

  Designed by Williamson Williamson, I think this house, called the Garden Laneway House, is immediately notable for two reasons. One, the overall design is beautiful, especially the exterior brickwork. I mean, wow:

  

  

  

  And two, it is a 4-bedroom house for a family of five. In fact, what the family did is turn the front house into a duplex, creating three homes on a lot where previously there was only one. And from the looks of it, it was their preference to live in the laneway house and use the laneway as their front door.

  This is exactly the sort of thing that I was getting at with my predictions post.

  Photos/Plans: Scott Norsworthy & Williamson Williamson

  2024.03.18

• Okay, fine, I support your laneway house

  This week, I received a notice in the mail that a neighbor to Mackay Laneway House is seeking variances for their own laneway house. I immediately thought to myself, “oh, the hypocrisy.” Here is a neighbor that vehemently opposed my Committee of Adjustment application back in 2017 and now wants to do something similar.

  It’s also not like you need minor variances in order to build a laneway house today. They are, as many of you know, permitted as-of-right. That’s how MLH was ultimately built. We went straight to building permit. But in this case, the request is for 7 variances to the current by-law. The build aspires to go above and beyond.

  As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s part of me that wants to be a real asshole here. But of course, that would run counter to many of the objectives that we regularly cover on this blog: more housing, revitalized laneways, and so on. So I can’t do that. It’s directionally the right city building move, and they have my full support.

  2024.03.09

• 4 predictions for Toronto’s laneways

  Brigitte Shim (of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects) invited Gabriel Fain and I to the Daniels Faculty this morning (at the University of Toronto) to talk about Mackay Laneway House.

  It was for a class on laneway housing and, as it turns out, some of the students had been using MLH as a case study. That’s pretty cool, although the primary lesson is probably “don’t build next to large trees.”

  Following the presentation, we had a good discussion about laneways, and it reminded me of some of the things that I believe to be true. More specifically, it reminded me of what I think will happen in the future:

  • Bona Fide Streets: Laneways will become bona fide streets. Meaning, they’ll get real names (most don’t have one today) and they’ll get serviced. Today, laneway suites are typically serviced via the main/existing house.
  • Severable Lots: Laneway lots will become severable. Right now this is strongly discouraged, because the intent is to create new rental housing and not new for-sale housing.
  • Market Inversion: Once these lots become severable, the market will then be able to decide which frontage is most valuable — the current street side or the laneway side. Maybe some get split right down the middle (50/50) or maybe some get biased toward one frontage. Either way, I think it will become common for the laneway frontage to be more desirable given its intimate scale and pedestrian orientation.
  • Mixed-Use: Non-residential uses will become allowed.

  I have no idea when all of this might happen, but I believe it will happen. So I wanted to write it down publicly.

  2024.03.07

• The end of the single-family home hegemony

  I opened Twitter today and one of the first tweets that I saw was about Austin passing a new resolution that allows 3 homes on every lot by-right; lowers the minimum lot size to 2,500 sf; and expedites planning approvals for triplexes and fourplexes. I then scrolled a bit further and found a tweet on how Vancouver is about to vote on a new motion that will allow 4-6 homes on every residential lot as-of-right. (The US typically uses the term “by-right”, whereas in Canada we use “as-of-right”.)

  None of this is surprising. As many of you know, Toronto just did something similar by allowing fourplexes + a laneway or garden suite on every residential lot. But all of this is still noteworthy because it reinforces one simple fact: cities across North America are all starting to rethink their low-rise single-family neighborhoods. I know that many of you will say that fourplexes are not enough. We should be doing more. But I think this is an important step.

  The single-family home hegemony is ending. We are now asking our cities to do more with the same amount of land.

  2023.07.20

• The future of Toronto’s neighborhoods

  

  

  Yesterday evening I visited the future of Toronto’s neighborhoods. It is located at 367 Howland Avenue. And it takes the form of 10 homes on a lot that previously used to house only 1. Developed by Green Street Flats and designed by Craig Race Architecture, it is a near perfect example of what Toronto hopes to achieve with its new multiplex policies. As Craig put it last night, “we found the missing middle!”

  Now to be fair, this is a double lot, measuring about 10m wide in total. And so this is twice the size of what the new policies now allow on a single lot — a fourplex plus a laneway suite or garden suite (4+1). But it is still generally consistent with what you could do today if you had two contiguous lots.

  That said, this project predates the new multiplex policies, meaning it required a long list of zoning variances and it led to an inevitable fight with the neighbors. This small project required an 8-day contested hearing before it was granted approval! Start to finish, Howland took over 3 years.

  That is ridiculous and so I think all of us should view the new multiplex policies as meaningful progress in our city. What was once contentious and a huge pain is now permissible as-of-right. Isn’t it funny how rules and perspectives change? “No, you can’t do this! Okay, now you can. Please do a lot of it.” So for the purposes of this post, let’s talk about Howland as if it were built on an as-of-right basis and you could do the same on your own lot if you were so inclined.

  From a design perspective, the homes are organized as follows:

  

  There’s a full-floor basement suite, a full-floor suite on the main level, two back-to-back two-storey upper suites, and then a laneway suite at the back. One reason for this configuration is that it means you never have to walk up more than one flight of stairs to get to your main living space. This was one of the design criteria and I think it works very well. Here’s an example of what this looks like (this is a suite #3):

  

  For this particular site, the entrance to suite #4 is at the back of the fourplex and accessed via an adjacent laneway. But for the “inboard” fourplex, each suite is accessed via the main street. Once again, I think this all works very well. I just wonder if there could be an opportunity to shave additional costs by moving some of the circulation outside (kind of like this). I guess it would depend on the width of the lot.

  

  Of course, the big question remains: Do projects of this scale actually make any money? Because if they don’t, then people aren’t going to continue building them. Though, I would say there are two ways to think about underwriting a project like this.

  The first is from a 100% investment standpoint: build 5 homes, rent 5 homes, and then collect a reasonable risk-adjusted return. The second is a hybrid approach. Maybe it’s build 5 homes, rent 4 homes, and live in the other one. In this case, the math is likely a bit different. It could just be about subsidizing your living expenses as opposed to generating a commensurate return.

  But in both cases, we know that these are very skinny projects. You need to be extra careful with your costs. And from what I gleaned last night, 6 or more suites is a better underwriting starting point (compared to 5). We also know that these projects only pencil with CMHC financing. Period. Full stop. If CMHC financing were to go away or meaningfully change, so to do these missing middle projects.

  So as we look toward the future of housing in Toronto’s neighborhoods, we need to keep in mind that these projects happen very much on the margin (as does all development, but it’s an even thinner line here). Meaning it remains to be seen whether these will happen at scale across the city, which is now the hope. It’ll also be interesting to see if developers like Green Street don’t scale up over time. I suspect they will.

  Congratulations to Green Street Flats, Craig Race Architecture, and the rest of the team on helping to pioneer this new housing typology. It’s a glimpse of the future and, judging by the turnout at last night’s open house, Toronto is ready for it.

  2023.06.30

• Will fourplexes be actually feasible in Toronto?

  Last week I wrote about Toronto’s plan to make fourplexes as-of-right across the city, but also why this form of missing middle housing shouldn’t have a maximum floor space index.

  Today, let’s look at the numbers in a bit more detail.

  If you look at a zoning map of Toronto, you’ll see that many neighborhoods across the city have a maximum floor space index (FSI) of 0.6. What this means is that if you have a piece of land like this:

  • Lot width: 20′
  • Lot depth: 115′
  • Site area: 2,300 sf

  Your total allowable gross floor area would be 1,380 square feet (0.6 x 2,300 sf).

  If you build a laneway suite in this city, that won’t count towards your total allowable GFA (otherwise they’d be very challenging/impossible to build). But if you want to build something like a triplex or a fourplex, it counts.

  The one important caveat is that if you’re building a residential building — that isn’t an apartment building with 5 or more homes — you can deduct the floor area of the basement:

  

  This, of course, helps the situation. But it doesn’t solve all of our problems.

  If you assume that the basement can be one home, that still only leaves 1,380 square feet for the other three, technically permissible, homes. This equals: 3 homes x 460 square feet.

  Another option would be 2 homes x 690 square feet. But still, we’re not exactly making it easy to deliver more “family-sized homes” in the city.

  And herein lies one of the problems (plural, because there are others). We can say that fourplexes are allowed across the city, but it may not actually be technically feasible or practical to build them.

  Note: I am not a planner. If you are, leave a comment below.

  2023.03.13

• Seattle is building more accessory dwellings than single-family houses

  In 2019, Seattle made it easier to build accessory dwelling units (ADUs). Among other things, they started allowing two ADUs per lot, they stopped requiring the owner to live on site, and they stopped requiring off-street parking. The result is that the city is now permitting close to 1,000 ADUs per year (2022 figure). And for the first time ever, this figure now exceeds the number of permits issued for single-family houses.

  

  Part of what’s driving this adoption is that the City created 10 pre-approved plans that owners/builders can choose from. And since they were launched in September 2020, these plans have been permitted 130 times. (Los Angeles did something very similar with its “standard plan program.”)

  In general though, Seattle’s policies seem more permissive than what we have here in Toronto. According to this recent “annual report”, it is estimated that about 12% of ADUs in Seattle are licensed as short-term rentals. About a third are also being permitted as condominiums. In Toronto, any sort of severance is heavily discouraged. The objective was and is to create new rental housing.

  But for Seattle, this seems to be creating more affordable homes for sale. The median selling price for an ADU is apparently $732,000, compared to $1.2 million for a single-family house. This sounds kind of good.

  Image: The Seattle Times

  2023.03.09

• Transit-oriented vs. single-family

  Michael Beach used to have a YouTube channel where he “looked at Google Maps a lot.” Meaning, he would pan around various cities and comment on their planning and overall built form. Technically the channel still exists, but he stopped making new videos a few years ago. Here is one where he talks about Dubai being “an absolute mess” (3.8 million views) and here is one where he looks at North York (in Toronto) and asks: “why is it here?”

  The most important point from his North York video is that it illustrates the deep divide that exists in Toronto (and other North American cities) between single-family “Neighbourhoods” (a defined planning term) and higher-density transit nodes, where things like tall buildings are allowed to go.

  In the case of North York, this contrast is perhaps at its most stark. Even the street network is designed to stop these two urban forms from commingling with each other too much. There are ring roads that surround the transit-oriented density, and separate, more suburban streets on the other side of it:

  

  This contrast is why there are so many people talking about the “missing middle.” And I’m sure that if you started asking random people on the street, most would agree that it would be nice if we could build more moderately-scaled housing. You know, like those buildings you see in Paris.

  The problem: Where should it go? Some people would probably suggest the left side of the above ring road. Just don’t build as tall, okay? But this kind of land is already a scarce commodity in a city like Toronto. We need these tall buildings because most of the city is codified to look like the right side of the above ring road.

  So if we have any chance of actually finding the missing middle, it is going to need to happen here, on the right side. Some progress has been made, not just in Toronto but across North America, with accessory dwellings (laneway suites). But it’s not going to be enough.

  This was simply a first step. It was us finding a solution to, “how can we add some more housing here without changing the look and feel and character of these residential streets in any way?” But even this small and incremental change has proven to be exceedingly controversial. People still react to new laneway suites like this:

  https://twitter.com/evboyce/status/1624840523516182528?s=20&t=Q9gCZfTGLz51rVyupxJDPg

  There are complex dynamics at play here.

  If you’re a homeowner that decides to create a new rental home at the rear of your property, you might be viewed as greedy. You are creating something (a home) that someone needs, and you intend to make a small margin on the transaction. It’s like making and selling bread for a small margin, except that selling delicious bread to people is typically viewed in a positive light. On the other hand, ensuring that the value of your house remains as high as possible is generally good practice here. Greed doesn’t factor in this way because, you know, single-family homes.

  There is no surprise why the missing middle is missing. It is missing because we have decided that we want it to be. But hey, $2,145 per month seems like a very reasonable price for a 2-bedroom house.

  2023.02.12

• A spectacular laneway retreat 11 years in the making

  

  The latest issue of Designlines magazine is about how Toronto is — finally — embracing laneway life. And one of the featured homes is none other than Mackay Laneway House. Pictured above is architect Gabriel Fain sitting on the front steps.

  As some of you will know, MLH took over a decade to get built. I first did a design for the house back in 2009. Laneway housing seemed like such an obvious opportunity, and so I designed a compact house that could fit neatly within the confines of my 25-foot-wide backyard.

  Technically, it was perfectly workable. But I could tell I was too early. After speaking with city staff, I immediately got the impression that this thing was not going to get approved. At least not now. So I shelved the project until 2017.

  By this time, it was clear that laneway housing was on its way to becoming a reality in Toronto. It was simply a matter of time. And so Gabriel Fain and I decided to come up with a new design and try our luck at the Committee of Adjustment (we needed, I think, over a dozen zoning variances).

  But it turns out that we were still too early. The project was immediately refused. After the decision, I had a few planning lawyers reach and offer to help me with a pro bono appeal. But I decided to wait until the new laneway policies came into force and the home could be built without any variances.

  And that’s exactly what we did. In the fall of 2020 we submitted for a building permit, and about 6 weeks later it arrived. The home was then built that winter and it went up on the market for rent in March 2021. It rented right away, even in the midst of intermittent COVID lockdowns.

  At this point, it’s hard to imagine that this form of housing was once illegal. Hundreds of permits have already been issued and this number is only going to increase. In fact, I believe that the humble laneway house is destined to become a defining characteristic of Toronto’s urban landscape.

  Toronto is finally embracing laneway life.

  2022.09.18