In Toronto, where housing prices are racing ahead of inventory, residents are building homes in their yards and moving their children or their parents into them.
From the New York Times:
After the last of their three children moved out, Joe and Rosalee Mihevc wanted to downsize from their 3,000-square-foot house on the west side of Toronto. The couple considered leaving the city — too much of a lifestyle change, they decided — or buying a condo in another neighborhood, but they couldn’t possibly afford it amid the city’s housing crunch.
So they’re moving to their backyard.
Last year, the Mihevcs erected a two-bedroom, 1,300-square-foot cottage in the grassy patch behind their house. The cost, which the family covered using a home equity line of credit, was about 500,000 Canadian dollars (or $350,000), roughly half what they would have paid for a condo in the area.
“I did 70 percent of the work myself,” said Mr. Mihevc, 70, who served on Toronto’s City Council for nearly three decades before retiring in 2021 to become an adjunct professor of human geography and urban studies at York University.
The question now is which of their children will get to live in the main house. “My kids are having kids, and there’s no way they can afford a big enough place to live,” he said.
It’s a common conundrum in Canada’s largest city, where a drastic inventory shortage and a ballooning population have set home prices skyrocketing. In an effort to ease the congestion, Toronto began allowing residents to build “garden suites” — defined as “self-contained living accommodations in rear yards” — on their properties in 2022. Olivia Chow, Toronto’s mayor, called the city’s housing market “a dire situation, a disaster,” in an interview.