If this city stands any chance of solv­ing the hous­ing crisis, it will need mul­ti­plexes in res­id­en­tial neigh­bour­hoods—a move that has many res­id­ents say­ing, “Any­where but here!”

Toronto Life:

CITY COUNCIL’S big swing came in May of 2023. As North Amer­ica’s fast­est­grow­ing met­ro­polis, Toronto des­per­ately needed more hous­ing—and a lot more vari­ety in that hous­ing—if it was going to accom­mod­ate exist­ing res­id­ents and absorb the more than 250,000 people mov­ing into the city annu­ally.

The prob­lem: Toronto has single-fam­ily homes hog­ging prime square foot­age on res­id­en­tial streets. It has con­dos and apart­ment towers dom­in­at­ing some of the more densely pop­u­lated areas. What’s miss­ing is a middle option: low-rise walkup build­ings with mul­tiple units—a form of hous­ing that was pop­u­lar here in the mid-20th cen­tury but has fallen out of favour. So, after more than three years of hold­ing pub­lic for­ums, host­ing meet­ings and ana­lyz­ing sur­vey res­ults, coun­cil finally voted: yes, it would allow new duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes to be built across Toronto and, cru­cially, in single-fam­ily strong­holds like High Park, Rosedale and the Beaches.

The ini­ti­at­ive was part of a lar­ger push called Expand­ing Hous­ing Options in Neigh­bour­hoods. The idea was to encour­age gentle forms of dens­ity by allow­ing mixed res­id­en­tial and retail along major streets and mak­ing it easier to build lane­way houses, garden suites, stacked town­houses and mul­ti­plexes in estab­lished res­id­en­tial areas. In zon­ing par­lance, these build­ings could now be erec­ted “as of right,” mean­ing they com­plied with new build­ing codes and zon­ing by-laws and could be approved instant­an­eously, cut­ting down on irrit­at­ing delays. Within 18 months, 452 mul­ti­plex per­mits were issued, net­ting 726 new hous­ing units. It was a small but neces­sary step in a city where the vacancy rate sits at a mere three per cent (five to seven per cent is con­sidered healthy for an urban centre).

This past sum­mer, city coun­cil handed down another approval: mul­ti­plexes of up to six units could be built in nine of the city’s 25 wards, includ­ing Park­dale– High Park, Dav­en­port, Toronto-Dan­forth, Beaches–East York and Scar­bor­ough North. The choice of cer­tain neigh­bour­hoods over oth­ers hinged on their prox­im­ity to transit, retail, walk­able streets, large or deep lots, aging hous­ing stock and the pres­ence of his­toric mul­ti­plexes.

On Palmer­ston Boulevard, halfway between Bloor and Har­bord, real estate developer Leonid Kotov pin­pointed a great lot. Green­Street Flats, his con­struc­tion and prop­erty man­age­ment firm, had built a dozen mul­ti­plexes in Toronto since 2017, and he could spot poten­tial. Kotov put together a pro­posal for something a little lar­ger than a six­plex at 501 Palmer­ston: he would replace the exist­ing three-storey, three-unit brown-brick home with a three-storey, 10-unit build­ing and throw in a garden suite on the site of the exist­ing gar­age.

Kotov knew from exper­i­ence that break­ing ground would be a lot easier if he had buy-in from the neigh­bours. The com­pany’s final ren­der­ing showed an exter­ior façade that was roughly in keep­ing with the street’s archi­tec­tural char­ac­ter—or, at least, some inter­pret­a­tion of it. Along with wrought-iron Juliet bal­conies, it fea­tured Vic­torian-esque exter­ior mould­ings and cor­nices. The pro­posed build­ing was cer­tainly more attract­ive than the char­ac­ter-free towers that make up so much of the city’s new hous­ing, but it didn’t entirely fit.

The push­back was swift. Johnny Lucas—the owner of the $2.7-mil­lion home right next door—was adam­antly opposed to Kotov’s pro­posal. There would be too many garbage bins and too many bicycles spill­ing out onto the front of the prop­erty, he said. Also, the build­ing was too big for the lot, and the units, which Lucas likened to “tiny rab­bit holes that will lead to a tran­si­ent slum,” were far too small. He made it clear that he would do everything in his power to block the project. On Novem­ber 12, he passed through city hall’s doors pre­pared to run defence for his street. And he wasn’t the only one. Res­id­ents from all over Toronto were wait­ing for their own hear­ings before the com­mit­tee of adjust­ment to air griev­ances about sim­ilar pro­pos­als for new devel­op­ments in their neigh­bour­hoods.

Lucas, a 76-year-old retired speech­writer, had spent 30 years draft­ing remarks for par­lia­ment­ari­ans of all polit­ical stripes at Queen’s Park, and he was ready for his Mr. Smith Goes to Wash­ing­ton moment. “This project is a fat man wear­ing small­s­ize clothes,” Lucas told the com­mit­tee. “I know a little about this—I could lose some weight. But I am not stand­ing before you wear­ing small-size clothes with the but­tons bul­ging. In this project, the but­tons are bul­ging, there is stress on every seam and you just know something is going to give. The res­ult will not be pretty.” Determ­ined to head off poten­tial crit­ics, Lucas hit one par­tic­u­lar note hard: “Let me be very, very clear,” he said emphat­ic­ally. “This is not NIM­BY­ism.”

 

 

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