Scott Stinson: How one Toronto suburb became a case study in the challenges of building new housing |
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Scott Stinson: How one Toronto suburb became a case study in the challenges of building new housing
Everyone wants to add housing right up until it might happen next door
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In March of 2024, Markham and the federal government announced that the city on Toronto’s northern border would receive almost $60 million from Ottawa under the Housing Accelerator Fund.
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A news release about the agreement said that Markham was committed to several initiatives that would “help increase different housing types and density,” a particular need in a city that has mostly two kinds of houses: big single-family homes and bigger single-family homes.
Scott Stinson: How one Toronto suburb became a case study in the challenges of building new housing Back to video
Among the commitments were “permitting four units as-of-right citywide,” a change that would allow homeowners to build as many as three additional residential units on a property that was zoned for a detached, semi-detached or townhouse home.
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These additional residential units, to be clear, would not include simply throwing up drywall to make units that could then be rented; they would require a separate entrance, kitchen and bathroom. Garden suite, coach suite, granny suite, nanny suite: you get the idea.
While that might sound like a significant change, it follows on to an adjustment made to provincial law in 2022 that permitted three units as-of-right on all such properties. You could already build two additional residential units on your property in Markham, in other words, provided the new units complied with existing building codes. This just ticked the number of allowable extra units up by one.
That was the idea, anyway. What followed was a two-year odyssey that underscored just how difficult it is to address the housing crisis by adding density. It was a lights-flashing, sirens-blaring warning about how everyone wants to add housing right up until it might happen next door. It was a lesson in urban planning, NIMBYism, the frankly glacial pace of municipal government, and it even included a surprise twist........