The New Legislation:
Back in 2019 the Ontario Government introduced a law that allows up to 3 units on a single property without a zoning bylaw amendment. It was up to municipalities to individually change their zoning bylaws and now in 2024, the majority, if not all municipalities across Ontario have implemented some version of this bylaw. Some municipalities are allowing up to 4 units without requiring a zoning bylaw amendment. This may not seem like anything special to an outsider, but this is a very big change in the status quo. If you’ve ever tried to change a zoning bylaw or know someone who has some form of development you’ll understand what I’m talking about.
How Things Used to Work:
Let’s talk about how things would have worked prior to this new law in order to give you a better idea about how these changes make building housing easier. For those who are unaware of how land planning works in Ontario here’s a brief synopsis. The Ontario government administers something called the Planning Act which is the overarching legislation of what Ontario as a province wants to achieve with respect the land use, housing, transportation, environmental concerns etc. The Planning Act provides the basis for each individual municipal government to come up with something known as an Official Plan for their city. This document outlines on a more granular level how the municipal government plans to use all of the land in their municipality. They administer things like building permits and enforce zoning bylaws. A zoning bylaw is effectively a list of requirements for each land use zone. For example you might have agricultural zoning, single family residential zoning, industrial zoning, retail zoning, or mixed commercial and residential zoning. Each of these zones will have rules like maximum building height, minimum setback from the lot lines, maximum buildable areas, parking requirements, etc. Most municipal websites have all of this documented and easily accessible so if you’re curious or you plan to build or develop land, it’s always advisable to get familiar with your zone. You can also find past city council decisions on the municipal website or the Ontario Land Tribunal website to learn what council tends to decide when people want to apply for special exceptions similar to one you might be considering. You can also call up the city and ask a city planner there if your proposed change would fall within the zoning bylaw.
Generally speaking if the change you want to make to your property is within the zoning bylaws rules, even if it’s a teardown and rebuild, you will have no trouble applying for a building permit. However, if you are proposing a change that falls just outside of the zoning bylaws you‘ll have to apply for a minor variance (e.g. taller building height than generally allowed). Depending on how big the change is and how reasonable the city views the change with respect to the surrounding properties you may or may not have your minor variance accepted. This process alone, can sometimes take multiple months depending on how back logged the city is. Then we get into the big scary monster of trying to re-zone a property. All I have to say is best of luck to you if you plan to re-zone something. I hope you have lots of time and lots of money ready to go. Changing zoning bylaws is a system that, in my opinion, was not very well thought out and now leads to significant delays in housing development.
Before this new law allowing up to 3 units on a single lot. If you wanted to change your “single-family residential” property to 3 or more units, that would usually fall well outside the current zoning bylaw and you would have to apply for a re-zoning. When you apply for this re-zoning, you have to hire planners and architects to prepare a proposal for the city, then once the city has received your proposal they put up a big sign on the property explaining the proposed change. Then they mail out a letter to all surrounding properties explaining the proposed change, and set a date allowing people to voice their concerns. Overall, I’m in favour of allowing people who have pre-existing homes to voice their concerns, especially if the proposed change could or would have an impact on the property owners quality of life or impede on their existing properties somehow.
However, like anything, you will get people who will simply disagree for the sake of disagreeing and will not allow ANY change to happen no matter how small. This is where this process falls apart in my opinion (and where the term NIMBY comes from). As cities grow and run out of land, the natural progression is to increase density. So as property values increase you will get developers or homeowners who would like to add a second or third unit legally to their property in order to help pay for the mortgage or simply to add more housing supply to an already suffocating city. But often times this means a re-zoning application. So instead of the city being able to simply approve the building permits and plans like they can now thanks to the updated legislation. There would be a whole rigamarole process that could often take multiple years and could even involve lawyers or paralegals to represent the arguing parties, which adds expense and delays to what often times could be a more simple process.
So effectively your options were, build a unit illegally and hope no one finds out (like a lot of Brampton, sorry Brampton), or spend multiple years and lots of money fighting for a simple change that at most will add a car or two to the street and probably won’t inconvenience your neighbours. I think that two things can be true at once, people having the right to voice their concerns, and the city looking out for the citizenry as a whole. They should consider the needs of the city and make decisions that help solve problems rather than exacerbate them.
Thoughts on a New System of Land Development:
Briefly, I want to discuss very big redevelopment projects and the problem with the way things are currently done. I think that the city requiring developers to submit a plan first and THEN allowing citizens to voice their concerns, and (usually) tear it top bits, is counter-productive and wastes everyone’s time and money. In my opinion a better approach could be allowing citizen to voice their opinions BEFORE tens of thousands of dollars have already been spent (sometimes more). This would allow community groups to consult on how land will be redeveloped alongside developers, architects, and city planners to come up with a plan that considers everyone’s interests BEFORE submitting the application and proposal to the city. I think this would ultimately speed up the city planning process and would make all parties much happier in the end rather than standoffish. With this model all stakeholders were considered and collaborated in the creation of this new development. I’m not sure how practical something like this would be but I think it’s worth considering as a better method of city planning.
What The New Legislation Makes Easier:
As mentioned the new rules allow up to 3 units per lot. Depending on your municipality their implementation of the rules might be a little bit different. For example in Toronto depending on your property you may have access to a laneway, which could allow for the construction of a laneway house or Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU). There are already companies out there which specialize in developing plans for laneway suites. If you want to find out if your property is suitable for a laneway suite there is a very handy tool called adusearch.ca which allows you to looking up certain cities and determine if your property can have one. In Toronto a majority of the existing land can have an ADU built. There is potential for over 400,000 new units (either attached or accessory to the existing building). The website says that there are currently 126 permitted ADUs in Toronto, I’m not certain I believe that the number is so low. But it could be that most basement apartments in the city do not have permits or maybe don’t fall under their definition of ADU.
In other cities like Mississauga for example you would most likely be looking at building a basement apartment, garden suite, or garage conversion. This was approved very recently in Mississauga in November of 2023. I would recommend looking at proposed bylaw amendments that show how a potential garden suite could be constructed (it’s also just fun to look at the renders). You can find the meeting notes here (pg. 83-134, pg. 112 and beyond are the renders). Depending on the size of your particular lot the allowable garden suite size will vary up to a maximum of around 1000 sq ft. The Region of Peel also has a forgivable loan program which can provide around $20,000 to upgrade a pre-existing basement apartment to a legal basement apartment if certain conditions are met. There might be similar programs in your region or municipality and if you are considering developing a secondary unit I would highly recommend speaking to the city planners at the city and expressing your intentions to see if they might be able to help you with your planning process and make sure that it goes according to plan.
It’s Still Not Enough:
While it’s great that all these changes are being made to add density. Quite honestly, all of these will be a drop in the bucket compared to the actual amount of housing that is needed across the province to help solve our housing crisis. Larger developments and purpose built rental housing will be more likely to put a real dent in the situation. While there is more funding at provincial and municipal levels to speed up development approvals and speed up timelines at the Ontario Land Tribunal we are still quite a ways away from building the housing that is going to be required to improve our current situation. We can’t solely rely on the private sector to develop all the housing the province needs as has become very apparent over the past few decades. There have been improvements to purpose built rental housing over the past few years after an almost 30 year lull in development thanks to different programs that assist larger developers in either redeveloping older properties or providing them HST breaks among other things to make the numbers actually make sense for this type of development. However, I do hope that many people decide to take advantage of the easier development and approval processes across Ontario because any amount of new housing is better than no new housing.
As always thank you for reading, feel free to let me know what you thought in the comments or via email. I’ll see you back here in two weeks.
All the best,
Oliver