2165 Gerrard Street East is a proposed 3-storey multiplex and 2-storey laneway duplex development designed by Atkinson Architect for P&R Developments and Galbraith & Associates Inc. planning.Galbraith & Associates Inc.
Small-scale builders are sounding the alarm that planning bureaucrats are erecting roadblocks to frustrate the intent of a multiplex-permitting bylaw designed to ease the grinding housing and affordability crisis in Canada’s largest city.
In 2023, the City of Toronto passed groundbreaking zoning and planning changes that would permit multiplexes up to four units on a single property citywide as part of the Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods (EHON) initiative. The EHON process was aimed at breaking down restrictive zoning rules that excluded apartments and smaller duplex homes from being constructed in much of the city. The report that introduced the bylaw made the intent crystal clear: “Make it easier to build multiplexes through simplified zoning and approval processes, reducing financial barriers and expanding permissions to more areas across the city.”
Now, more than a year later, some novel interpretations of that bylaw are showing up in staff reports that recommend rescinding some of those permissions and making the process more complicated again on the grounds that some of these buildings are not multiplexes at all, particularly if they are designed as semi-detached buildings.
“I have multiple projects that could be negatively affected,” said Craig Race, a Toronto architect who built his first fourplex in 2017 well before the new bylaw. He said the change in tone from the city since 2023 had, until recently, been nothing short of miraculous.
“This is called missing middle housing, that’s primarily the form. But there was also a missing middle kind of developer,” Mr. Race said. He has consulted with builders hoping to build multiplexes at scale but also with homeowners looking to find ways to age in place or create space for young family members. “This has opened up different rental and ownership models; we’ve got clients who are creating sub-$1-million home ownership opportunities.”
A recent example of the pushback against some multiplexes was heard at the Oct. 24 Committee of Adjustment meeting around a proposal by Paul Marques Architect Inc. for Old Orchard Property Developments Inc. to take an existing semi-detached duplex numbered 58-60 McNairn Ave. and split the lot along the party wall, and then add two more units to each semi.
“As these eight units are all contained within a single building, the proposal constitutes an apartment building in accordance with the zoning bylaw,” the city staff report reads. It then outlines the ways apartment buildings are not permitted in the neighbourhood zoning.
The issue appears to spring from a series of conflicting definitions of semi-detached homes versus townhouses and fourplexes in the bylaw’s text. It seems to suggest fourplexes are standalone buildings, while also allowing semi-detached structures to be converted to a fourplex.
“To unwind all of those definitions … it’s not an insignificant amount of work; there were a lot of changes; there were some time constraints,” said Graig Uens, director of planning with Batory Management who helped lead the laneway suites elements of the EHON initiative when he was working with the city.
“When you’re doing this stuff, there’s a lot of voices in the room, a lot of entrenched opinions at the senior levels of planning,” Mr. Uens said. “I don’t think there was any nefarious intent: I think it’s a function of when you’ve got an absolute labyrinth of a zoning bylaw.”
For professional planners who make their living navigating the maze of city rules for clients, there’s still frustration that a clear push to create housing has gotten muddied up in this new interpretation.
“Clearly the intent of the EHON exercise was to allow townhouse fourplexes. Why hasn’t it been raised before,” said Sean Galbraith, principal of Galbraith & Associates, who said he has clients who have already had almost identical buildings approved as fourplexes since the bylaw passed.
Treating these paired fourplexes as a single apartment building is like a kiss of death according to Mr. Galbraith. He said there are huge areas of the city where zoning bans apartment buildings – defined as any building with more than five apartments – and their planning requirements are vastly different than a multiplex.
“There’s no such thing as a small-scale apartment building. The same zoning applies to a 15-storey tower in the park versus a house,” he said. For example: “You have to have covered parking, extra landscaping and you have to have a garbage room, you can’t put bins in the back.”
Proposed south elevation at 58-60 McNairn Ave., Toronto.Evelyn Romano/Supplied
Also, apartment buildings pay tens of thousands of dollars in to the city in development charges for every unit. Multiplexes do not pay development charges.
In the McNairn project, the Committee of Adjustment ignored city staff and approved the project, despite neighbourhood disapproval. However, many applicants may not be willing to take the expensive risk of applying to the Committee, which can add months to the timeline of a project that’s supposed to be approved “as of right.”
Concerned that builders and homeowners may sit on the sidelines has pushed Brad Bradford, councillor for Beaches-East York and a former staffer in city planning, to put forward a motion asking staff to clarify this interpretation and propose amendments to modify the bylaw to smooth the way for more housing.
“I think by the letter of the law they are interpreting it correctly. But that interpretation is at odds with the spirit and intention of the policy,” Mr. Bradford said. He claims the conflicting readings of the law reflect 20 years of drift and inaction on the housing file colliding with dramatic change proposed in recent years.
“The City of Toronto, writ large, is an organization that has a real culture of fear; people don’t want to make a decision,” he said. “We cannot be the overlords and arbitrators of process. We need much more of a mind-frame of delivering results.”
For Mr. Race, the best result would be an open and clear system where everyone knows the rules.
“We had a brief moment where I could be a competent professional, where I could tell a client with 100 per cent certainty what would happen. Now we’re back to an ambiguous state,” he said.