Global Courant 2023-05-20 13:00:00
Housing advocates have welcomed a recent decision by the Toronto City Council to allow the construction of multiplexes in city neighborhoods dominated by single-family homes.
In Toronto, multiplexes are defined as low-rise housing with two to four units within one building. Until recently, zoning laws had limited their presence in many parts of the city, but that changed after a council vote on 10 May.
With a growing population, Toronto is embracing multiplexes as a tool to increase housing supply in Canada’s largest city.
Still, questions remain about how many new homes will actually emerge from this policy change and how affordable they will be – even if greater supply and diversity of housing is desperately needed.
“We need a wider variety of housing types to accommodate different types of households,” said Valerie Preston, an urban housing expert at York University in Toronto.
And while multiplexes can help provide more varied housing options for larger families or others in need, that doesn’t mean they’re cheap to develop, rent, or buy.
“It won’t do anything directly for affordability,” said Preston, who expects multiplex development to have a limited impact on the city’s overall housing supply due to the cost of acquiring and developing real estate.
toronto expect at least 700,000 new residents by 2051 and many are complaining that they cannot afford housing as the average home costs more than $1 million.
Question and country
Increasing density, outside of condo towers that typically offer smaller units, has been welcomed by many housing advocates.
The approach of adding a soft level of density is one that other jurisdictions are exploring, both in Canada and elsewhere.
In British Columbia, the provincial government plans to introduce legislation this year that would allow three to four units on a single-family lot. Similar housing strategies have been introduced in some US citiesAnd New Zealand.
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But putting more homes on existing lots can increase the value of the land underneath.
“Clearly, the more units you can put on a piece of land, the more it’s worth,” said Jane Londerville, a retired associate professor of real estate at the University of Guelph.
But she points out that not every suburban lot or structure will be suitable for this type of development.
Sabine Ghali, a real estate agent in Toronto, said the economy will largely dictate where multiplexes are built — and they are less likely to be developed in some upscale neighborhoods because of the costs involved.
Investors and homeowners looking for additional income will move on “when the numbers are right,” Ghali said via email.
Gregg Lintern, Toronto’s chief planner, has acknowledged that it is unclear whether offering more “missing middle” housing, including multiplexes, avenue homes and garden suites, will create much more affordable housing.
“It’s private market housing,” he told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning last year. “Whether it creates homes that are more affordable, only time will tell.”
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James White, professor of planning and urban design at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, is skeptical that plywood development will bring rent or price reduction.
“Who is going to own and rent this property?” asks White. He expects that private investors are probably most interested in building multiplexes, as opposed to institutional investors or public housing providers.
These “hobby landlords” may be interested in developing properties this way, but White said their involvement may not be as beneficial to tenants, who will depend on those landlords’ choices and management capabilities.
He said these concerns raise questions about whether such a development will affect rents and house prices “in a positive way”.
Complexity and cost
Ronald De Coteau, co-founder and CEO of Property Pathways, works with clients looking to convert their homes into multiplexes.
He said these projects are more complicated than some people think and require significant investment.
“It’s going to be really prohibitively expensive for a lot of people,” De Coteau recently told Metro Morning, pointing to the costs associated with turning a single-family home into a multi-unit structure.
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Cherise Burda, the executive director of City Building TMU, a Toronto-based think tank, said the scope of work involved in adding a unit to a home can vary widely depending on the size of construction required.
She wants governments to do more to encourage such development and make it easier for people to pursue.
“If we expect homeowners to figure it out on their own, it’s not going to work out,” Burda said.
Despite the challenges, some people are already reaching out to construction professionals about building multiplexes, including those at Toronto-based BVM Contracting, a family-owned business that provides home construction and home renovation services.
Ryan Meagher, BVM’s business development manager, said the company has heard from both real estate investors and families about potential multiplex projects.
The transition to larger low-rise buildings will be “a learning curve for everyone involved,” he said, as more people try to build them and more designers and builders tackle them.
Meagher noted that such projects could take months to years, suggesting multiplexes won’t have much of an impact on Toronto’s housing stock this year or next.
A livelier Toronto
Burda, Londerville and Preston see a lot of positives in the increased development of plywood – even if there are limits to what they can do for affordability.
“Is it going to solve Toronto’s affordable housing problem? No,” says Londerville, who nevertheless believes multiplexes could help make certain neighborhoods more affordable.
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Burda said the residential areas of Toronto where such types of housing are scarcer are also the areas with the most available land for these types of uses. Multiplexes can address the imbalance.
“Most of our density is crammed into small pieces of land,” Burda said of downtown neighborhoods full of high-rises. “The rest of the city is like a sea of low-rise housing,” which is ripe for change, she said.
For De Coteau, the potential of multiplexing is easy to see.
“I call it the Sesame Street effect,” says De Coteau, describing a transformation from underutilized lots to Toronto’s suburban streets and a shift to a more intertwined community life. “Essentially, you get much more vibrant communities.”
With more families occupying the same footprint, you see more kids playing and you see more life in the neighborhood.
“That’s really what’s going to bring Toronto back to life, after the pandemic,” De Coteau said.
