Eugene Dening photographed next to a garden suite he built with his partner in his Edmonton backyard on Sept. 15, 2018.Amber Bracken
Edmonton is testing a new way to encourage new housing within its sparsely populated inner city neighbourhoods, by granting homeowners there the right to subdivide their properties into pork chops.
Yes, pork chops.
“What’s interesting about pork-chop lots is that they offer several compelling opportunities,” said Edmonton Councillor Scott McKeen, who last week joined the rest of the city’s council in re-zoning four properties as part of a pilot to test the idea. “As it stands today, the only options [to add housing units on existing properties] are to sell your home and lot or demolish the home and subdivide [the lot] for two narrow-lot homes.”
The pork-chop term might be new for Canadians but is nonetheless common in Europe and Australia, where it can also go by the names “battle-axe,” “hammerhead” or “flag” lot. In these countries, pork-chop lots are used to subdivide properties front to back, rather than down the middle. This allows new housing to be built in backyards in neighbourhoods that are sparsely populated and dominated by detached housing.
Pilot land division project in Edmonton
To promote greater density in single-famly-home
neighbourhoods, homeowners will be allowed to
divide their properties into two building lots,
when before there was one. Below are some
examples of how things might be done.
PROPERTY
LINES
Original
Divided
ORIGINAL
PROPERTY
VERSION ONE:
In this case the owner sells off a pork-chop
shaped lot and retains the smaller lot fronting
the street. Both properties have driveways off
the street.
STREET
Existing driveway
New driveway
Existing
house
New
house
VERSION TWO:
In this case the owner subdivides and sells off a
portion of the backyard with laneway access.
STREET
Existing driveway
Existing
house
New
house
New
driveway
LANEWAY
CARRIE COCKBURN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL,
SOURCES: SHERRI SHORTEN; METTE RASMUSSEN;
SHELLEY SABO; CITY OF TEA TREE GULLY
Pilot land division project in Edmonton
To promote greater density in single-family-home
neighbourhoods, homeowners will be allowed to divide
their properties into two building lots, when before there
was one. Below are some examples of how things might
be done.
PROPERTY
LINES
Divided
Original
ORIGINAL
PROPERTY
VERSION ONE:
In this case the owner sells off a pork-chop shaped lot
and retains the smaller lot fronting the street. Both
properties have driveways off the street.
STREET
Existing driveway
New driveway
Existing
house
New
house
VERSION TWO:
In this case the owner subdivides and sells off a portion of
the backyard with laneway access.
STREET
Existing driveway
Existing
house
New
house
New
driveway
LANEWAY
CARRIE COCKBURN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCES: SHERRI SHORTEN;
METTE RASMUSSEN; SHELLEY SABO; CITY OF TEA TREE GULLY
Pilot land division project in Edmonton
To promote greater density in single-family-home neighbourhoods, homeowners will
be allowed to divide their properties into two building lots, when before there was one.
Below are some examples of how things might be done.
VERSION ONE:
In this case the owner
sells off a pork-chop
shaped lot and retains the
smaller lot fronting the
street. Both properties
have driveways off the
street.
VERSION TWO:
In this case the owner
subdivides and sells off
a portion of the
backyard with laneway
access.
ORIGINAL
PROPERTY
STREET
STREET
Existing driveway
Existing driveway
PROPERTY
LINES
New driveway
Existing
house
Existing
house
Divided
Original
New
house
New
house
New
driveway
LANEWAY
CARRIE COCKBURN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL,
SOURCES: SHERRI SHORTEN; METTE RASMUSSEN; SHELLEY SABO; CITY OF TEA TREE GULLY
The result of this idea – a secondary house behind an existing house – might seem like old hat, given that cities such as Ottawa, Hamilton, Vancouver, Toronto and even Edmonton have slowly embraced allowing detached homeowners to build secondary suites on their properties, in the form of carriage houses (or garden homes, or laneway homes, or coach homes – the housing type has myriad names).
But Edmonton is taking the idea further and is testing a plan to let homeowners cut out and sell a portion of their lot, creating two properties where once there was only one.
In Canada, only Vancouver currently allows such sales, although Victoria has experimented with the idea.
Some in Edmonton are strongly in favour of the plan. “It simply adds to the options for homeowners to take advantage of the equity in their home property,” Mr. McKeen said.
Dozens of Edmonton property owners signed up to be the pilot program’s first guinea pigs. Eugene Dening is one of the few who made the cut.
The 34-year-old architect and his partner own a 900-square-foot, 1940s-era bungalow on Alberta Avenue, an older, inner-city Edmonton neighbourhood. And as with many houses built during the era, their house is small and out-sized by its relatively long, deep yard.
“We have a large lot and we found we didn’t use the back half at all,” Mr. Dening said.
Mr. Dening is an architect. So, faced with this unused yard space and remembering his time living in a laneway home in Vancouver, last year he designed and built a laneway home on what was once his garage. He said the one-bedroom, 500-square-foot laneway home is similar to a typical urban condo in design and it cost the couple about $70,000 to build.
Under Edmonton’s existing rules, Mr. Dening is only allowed to rent the secondary home to a tenant. But as part of the pilot, with the rezoning of his property, he will be able to slice a pork chop out of his existing property and sell it.
Dening is part of a city pilot project that allows homeowners to subdivide their backyard and sell part of it.Amber Bracken/The Globe and Mail
For Mr. Dening, that opens up a bit of a quandary: How much is such a unique product worth?
“We’ve got a bunch of different numbers, but there’s not really a precedent for it,” he said. “We’re not sure. I’m going to post it for sale and see what kind of interest I get. I’ve been told anywhere from $110,000 to $180,000.”
If those prices sound low, that’s the point, supporters say. It’s seen as one way to support housing affordability.
Edmonton’s first effort at encouraging infill housing in its inner city was to allow many existing detached-home lots to be subdivided, but only down the middle. That means any move to make two dwellings on a property that once featured only one house required the existing house to be knocked down and two new ones built on either side of the middle dividing line.
The result has been so-called ‘skinny’ homes that, ironically, are much fatter in price than comparable new housing in the suburbs, let alone the existing but aging inner-city housing.
In some Edmonton neighbourhoods, where 1950s bungalows sell for $450,000, a modern, stylish skinny home beside them can sell for almost double that price.
Sherri Shorten, who advocated the pork-chop idea before Edmonton City Council in 2016 as part of an infill-housing ideas competition, said her goal was to disrupt the skinny-home trend in Edmonton while still finding a way to revitalize the city’s inner city.
“These skinny houses are basically a suburban model that’s being implanted in the mature neighbourhoods,” Ms. Shorten said. “Right now, we’re designing buildings to exclude.”
Pork-chop lots offer to flip that outcome, she said, and only require a tweak to zoning. “What I was looking at was bringing an idea forward that would deal with affordability and housing issues. The question was if you can split a lot down the middle, why can’t you split it front to back?”
The pork-chop approach allows housing to grow and shrink with individual needs, Ms. Shorten said. It also allows a neighbourhood to attract a diversity of socio-economic residents organically.
For example, she said, a pork-chop option could allow a retiree to remain in the home they raised a family in as a laneway home is built for them out back. Once it’s done, they can move to the new house and sell the old one, often at a lower price than a new-built one, allowing another family another affordable option in the form of the now unused, larger first house out front.
Still, Ms. Shorten said there will be challenges. A majority of Edmonton’s inner-city neighbourhoods have back alleys and laneways, but this infrastructure is often not well maintained. And simple things such as addresses and mailboxes are also expected to be hurdles to overcome.
But those who have dealt with the slings and arrows of infill in Edmonton – including resident opposition and concerns – such as Mr. McKeen, are supportive.
“For the existing community, a garden suite is the most sensitive form of infill,” he said. “It’s far less intrusive than demolishing a home and building two narrow lot homes. Yes, there will be additional parking demand. But the fact is, most residential streets in Edmonton have the capacity.”