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Laneway Housing and Garden Suites

WislaHD said:
Depending on your lot, you often won't have a choice. Not many streets in Toronto have laneway access, however, most neighbourhoods have backyards able to support garden suites.

Well, there is no choice anyway, since the City of Toronto explicitly prohibits garden suites in its zoning. Toronto is lagging behind other jurisdictions which have allowed it such as Ottawa.

I would welcome the Province coming out and forcing municipalities to adopt garden suites in their next comprehensive zoning reviews.
Click to expand...
There is definitely movement on this front. To be honest, it isn't always the City or Province who is behind and unwilling to adopt new types of housing. For the most part, its the people who live in those areas.

Here is an example of someone wanting to block the allowance of Garden Suites in Toronto because it will change their neighbourhood:
https://www.facebook.com/gardensuitestoronto/posts/129364372375077
 
gardensuitestoronto said:
There is definitely movement on this front. To be honest, it isn't always the City or Province who is behind and unwilling to adopt new types of housing. For the most part, its the people who live in those areas.

Here is an example of someone wanting to block the allowance of Garden Suites in Toronto because it will change their neighbourhood:
https://www.facebook.com/gardensuitestoronto/posts/129364372375077
Click to expand...

It's the City that enables the actions of people like this, though. Private individuals don't have particularly important statutory standing in the approvals process unless they appeal a proposal. "Neighbourhood character" is littered throughout various official City of Toronto planning policies, as well as a raft of other policies, regulations, and guidelines that give power to single family home owners who oppose densification.

All of this is an active choice on the part of planners and electeds. If they muster the gumption to change the policies and liberalize the Neighbourhoods to make them less exclusionary, they have the power to do exactly that, today, and there is little that your garden variety NIMBY could do to block it.
 
gardensuitestoronto said:
There is definitely movement on this front. To be honest, it isn't always the City or Province who is behind and unwilling to adopt new types of housing. For the most part, its the people who live in those areas.

Here is an example of someone wanting to block the allowance of Garden Suites in Toronto because it will change their neighbourhood:
https://www.facebook.com/gardensuitestoronto/posts/129364372375077
Click to expand...

You're a better person than me: I can't sympathise with people who don't want their neighbourhoods to change.

I think the city is to blame though for allowing ideas like "stable neighbourhoods" to be adopted by people. It's in all manner of planning policy publication.
 
Maybe one way to change minds on how we use 'stable residential neighbourhoods' is to take more of a land value tax approach to property taxation. You can opt out of intensification, but the taxes will be based on the highest best use the land could be put to (and they will be eye watering). In the extreme, the value of the properties would decline to match the value of the improvements (ie, the land value of the property is zero, due to the taxes equaling the implied rent).
 
From the above link:

Tell us what you think about Garden Suites! The Garden + Suites survey is open until June 1, 2021. Virtual public consultations will be held on May 11, 12 and 13, 2021.
Tell us what you think! Opens in new window
Click to expand...

I advocate those that read this thread to provide their input on the survey, it won't take longer than 5 minutes. I doubt the sample size of the survey will be huge, so there is real opportunity for our collective input to make a difference on policy.
 
WislaHD said:
From the above link:



I advocate those that read this thread to provide their input on the survey, it won't take longer than 5 minutes. I doubt the sample size of the survey will be huge, so there is real opportunity for our collective input to make a difference on policy.
Click to expand...

Done!
 
[Toronto] "The final home will have a garage below and a 350-square-foot studio apartment on the upper level... He plans to charge about $1,300 a month for the bachelor unit..."

...a real-world city-grant subsidized laneway kit build in the news.

www.blogto.com

A Toronto laneway house that went up in one single day will provide affordable housing

Toronto resident Tarik Kadri knows what it is like to live on a limited income and struggle with housing. "I grew up in city housing — we had ...
www.blogto.com www.blogto.com
 
spacing.ca

LORINC: Debunking the misinformation about garden suites - Spacing Toronto

While most people were riveted last weekend by the wretched spectacle of extremist-palooza in Ottawa, the busy beavers of the tiny world of ratepayer activism were filling their own airwaves with tactical misinformation about “garden suites,” the latest planning outrage to be visited on...
spacing.ca
 
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