A viral photograph of Toronto’s skyline is prompting discussions over its zoning laws and the hurdle they pose to curbing the city’s housing crisis.
The image captures Toronto’s downtown, midtown and uptown and is being used to highlight its “missing middle.”
Toronto takes the whole concept of the "missing middle" to the next level. pic.twitter.com/tu1yYEIw2m
— M. Nolan Gray (@mnolangray) September 16, 2024
A missing middle refers to a lack of medium-density housing in urban areas, which includes laneway homes, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhouses, and low-rise apartments.
The photograph has garnered significant attention online, with many commenting on how the city’s appearance is a reflection of its housing availability.
“You either live in a $1.5 million plus single family home, a shoebox in the sky, or rent something older in the middle (no middle options for ownership),” one X user commented.
“It looks pretty from this view but it’s terrible for the city,” another person wrote.
“It does create a cool effect when looking north from the CN Tower, like the city just keeps going on forever. But not ideal from a planning standpoint,’ someone else said.
Toronto is packed with high-rise condos which house nearly 47 per cent of the city’s population, according to its official data. But, many of the homes surrounding Toronto’s towering silhouette are not equipped to house more than one family.
Here lies part of the problem.
Because of zoning by-law 569-2013, which largely prohibited the redevelopment of single-family homes into multiplex dwellings until last year, it has been and still is challenging to redevelop existing single-family homes into multiple units, T.J Cieciura, Town Planning Consultant and President of Design Plan Services, explained to Now Toronto.
However, in Feb. 2022, city council adopted an official plan and zoning amendments to allow garden suites on properties in most residential zones across Toronto, it told Now in an email statement on Thursday.
And, in May 2023, city council voted to allow multiplexes in all residential zones including those that were historically limited to only single-detached houses.
“These permissions have been in effect since June 14, 2023, and duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes are allowed in all residential zones across Toronto,” the city said.
Most recently, in May 2024, the city endorsed further zoning amendments that would permit the development of townhouses and small-scale apartment buildings along major streets in all neighbourhoods throughout Toronto.
“These small-scale apartment buildings would be permitted up to six storeys in height and to contain up to 60 homes each,” the city said, though the amendment has been appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal and is not yet in effect.
RED TAPE CONTINUES TO BE A HURDLE FOR DEVELOPMENT
Despite the recent changes, red tape continues to hinder development as it requires a rigorous compliance process and often comes at a huge financial cost, Cieciura explained.
“Typically we find that even with more relaxed zoning standards to allow multiplexes, the financial cost of this scale of development tends to be a hindrance,” he continued.
According to Cieciura, the three most common examples of medium-density development would be “a four-dwelling unit building within an existing neighbourhood that would fit in with the single-detached dwellings surrounding it, a lane-based house behind a main building on the lot,and a garden suite type dwelling which is essentially a small house in the rear yard behind a main house.”
“The idea is to provide a variety of living choices within the vibrant neighbourhoods that make up the city,” he continued.
But the struggle doesn’t stop at navigating the city’s zoning laws or the rising costs of development.
Planners regularly contend with push back from local residents, who often oppose construction in the interests of preserving the character of their neighbourhood, Cieciura explained.
“The main day to day issue many applicants and builders experience is the NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard) that comes from existing residents not wanting to see change in their neighbourhood,” he said.
“I have been to hundreds of public meetings in a wide diversity of neighbourhoods across the
city and throughout Ontario, and there isn’t one neighbourhood that we work in that doesn’t have some residents who think their neighbourhood is unique in terms of character, and that any proposed development would be better suited somewhere else,” Cieciura continued.
He explained that this can create a tenuous political landscape at the municipal level as local leaders look to make decisions they know would benefit the city as a whole, while managing constituents who vocally and vehemently oppose them.
In addition, the approval process for development is far too long, Cieciura argues. Unless a development proposal complies with every single regulation, there will be a minimum four to six month delay simply to get additional approvals in advance of applying for building permits, he explained.
Nonetheless, many of Toronto’s zoning laws genuinely shield people and neighbourhoods from harmful development, Cieciura says.
“Some of the rationale is well grounded in protecting certain uses [and] users from other uses [and] users. Nobody wants a chemical producer or a metal stamping plant beside a children’s daycare,” Cieciura wrote.
However, other laws are nonsensical, he said, and contribute to Toronto’s “partially” self-inflicted housing shortage.
For example, when the city has any number of 50-ft. wide residential lots, in close proximity to TTC transit lines and planners try to divide that lot into two 25-ft. wide lots, effectively doubling the housing on one lot, the zoning is a major hurdle, Cieciura explained.
“We find it very difficult to understand how someone can say that a single residential house on a 25’ wide lot is totally incompatible with a single residential house on a 50’ wide lot.”
COST OF DEVELOPMENT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE
Zoning laws and nimbyism aside, the taxes and fees associated with development likely pose the largest hurdle to increasing housing supply, Cieciura says, “although it’s tough to quantify the effect compared to each other,” he argues.
Despite this, recent data outlining development charges over the past 14 years shows an almost 1,000-per cent increase in Toronto and a 274-per cent rise in the GTA, which Cieciura described as “astronomically high.”
He explained that these kinds of rate increases are a “direct dis-incentive to new construction and development of all housing types across the city,” and that they suppress the expansion of more and new housing.
“If the city and province want to get serious about housing supply, it is financial incentives that will swing the needle, otherwise, all the zoning and policy tweaks will just be nibbling at the edges of the problem,” he concluded.
Meanwhile the city says it will continue to action its multi-pronged housing plan that seeks to “increase permissions for housing and address exclusionary zoning.”
