Toronto Star Referrer

Making laneways home suite home

A 2018 bylaw was supposed to help ease the city’s housing shortage by allowing secondary units on back alleys. Why have so few been built?

TESS KALINOWSKI REAL ESTATE REPORTER

In about two weeks, the two-storey, two-bedroom laneway suite that replaced Tabatha Southey’s garage will be ready for her son and his fiancée to move in.

She says the 1,000-square-foot stand-alone home that cost about $560,000 to build and landscape, could just as easily house herself, her parents or a tenant.

It is among about 50 houses that Torontonians have built in their backyards since the city passed a bylaw in 2018 allowing the construction of a second home on lots that back onto alleyways.

Southey’s laneway house has been a labour of love designed to meld with the character of the Cabbagetown house where she has lived for 28 years. Her contractor, a neighbour — Mark Pelzi of Sumach Contracting — even went looking for matching brick.

One of the best things about building the house, says Southey, a writer, is it means more people will be sharing her beloved neighbourhood.

“This is two more people or three more people living in my neighbourhood to go to (the local pub) the House on Parliament, and have a pint and support the other local businesses I love,” she said.

“I know how lucky I am to live here. The idea of being able to extend that luck to someone else … I hope the whole block gets filled up with laneway houses.”

That is precisely what city officials hoped when they approved laneway suites in 2018. They wanted to diversify the kinds of housing available in Toronto’s downtown neighbourhoods, opening them up to residents who might not otherwise be able to afford them.

But laneway suites haven’t — at least so far — put a dent in the city’s housing shortage or addressed its affordability challenges.

That’s why, on Thursday, the city’s planning and housing committee approved changes to the original laneway bylaw to make the process faster and easier.

Politicians and planners say laneway homes are one in a series of solutions designed to gently add density to the neighbourhoods that already have transit connections and other highly valued community services.

In addition to laneway suites, the city has expanded the rules allowing the construction of more secondary or basement suites and, in January, it is expected garden suites will be added to the mix so that more homes can be added to lots that don’t back onto alleys.

Since the bylaw passed, there have been only 238 applications to build laneway homes and only nine of those applicants are participating in the Affordable Laneway Suites Pilot that provides forgivable loans of up to $50,000 in exchange for a 15-year commitment to keep the rent below the city’s average market price.

City planning officials say laneway homes were never expected to significantly boost the housing supply, but there will be cumulative gains. They also didn’t expect that the secondary homes would be priced more affordably than other Toronto rentals.

A city survey found that laneway suites rent for an average of $3.25 per square foot, or $2,600 for an 800-square-foot, two-bedroom unit. About 30 per cent of building permit holders expected to use the laneway suites as rentals. Another 30 per cent planned to house family and 40 per cent expected to rent to family or live in the laneway themselves.

Meantime, interest in building laneway suites has been growing — from 16 applications in 2018 to 95 last year. With 58 applications already filed by May, city officials expect at least as many this year.

But with about 30,000 downtown city lots backing onto laneways, Toronto wants to encourage more homeowners to build these second homes.

Despite objections from about a dozen community groups, the committee agreed to allow the addition of about a foot to the existing height allowance for laneway homes and to reduce the backyard green space requirement by allowing a wider, nonpermeable path between the original house and the laneway home. The amendments have still to be approved by city council.

Senior city planner Graig Uens says the changes amount to tweaks of the original rules and they address the concerns that most often send laneway home applications to the Committee of Adjustment.

He said the number of laneway building applications is what the city anticipated in a 2018 staff report that predicted between 100 and 300 a year.

“We’re more or less at that point now,” said Uens, although the pandemic may have “frustrated some people’s efforts to pursue this.”

Deputy Mayor Ana Bailão, who chairs the planning and housing committee, says, “Nobody ever expected thousands would be popping up.”

“This is a new program. Even today I find lots of people are not aware of it,” she said.

She points out the laneway bylaw amendments were part of a planning and housing committee agenda that also included other moves to make room for more people in the city’s established neighbourhoods, including the addition of multiplexes to streets that currently allow only detached and semidetached houses, and a reduction in parking requirements for condos.

Laneway homes are one solution to two city priorities: a housing shortage and climate change, said Bailão.

When residents talk about preserving the character of their neighbourhood, they sometimes fail to recognize that people are part of that character and that part is already changing, she said. Working people, who have lived in established neighbourhoods for decades, are being pushed out because they are no longer affordable.

“The data show us right now that there’s many neighbourhoods that are actually decreasing in population,” said Bailão. “We need to change in order to make sure that we continue to have inclusive and thriving neighbourhoods.”

Although some have been advertised on short-term rental sites such as Airbnb, laneway suites were never intended to be tourist accommodation, Bailão said. But if the laneway home is the principal residence of the person renting it on a short-term basis — whether that is the owner of the home or a tenant — and the rentals fall within the city’s other short-term rental rules, it is legal.

“I certainly hope that through the (short-term rental) licensing system that we’ve created, that we catch any that are not somebody’s principal residency,” she said.

Independent planner Sean Galbraith, who helps clients navigate the Committee of Adjustment, is frequently critical of Toronto’s progress on diversifying housing options in established neighbourhoods. But he applauded the amendments to the laneway rules.

“The city is doing it right: it’s learning and adapting to optimize things to make it reasonably easy to make laneway suites. The proposed changes won’t make properties that didn’t already qualify for a suite get one, but they will mean that fewer variances will be needed, lowering costs and speeding up approvals,” he said.

Architect Tom Knezic, who designed Southey’s laneway home and others, wrote a letter supporting the bylaw amendments. He said the taller height allowance helps in designing more sustainable buildings, something that is a particular interest to his company, Solares Architecture.

He thinks there has been so much “political baggage” foisted on the laneway program, it was bound to disappoint some.

Still, Knezic thinks homeowners should consider renovating and expanding their primary home before building another house in the backyard.

“You should renovate your home for as much density as possible. A basement apartment is one of the greatest things that we can do if we want to increase affordability and increase the housing stock, increase density and not change the character in neighbourhoods,” he said.

“Once you’ve exhausted what you can do in the house, then you should move on to the laneway. That should be the cherry on top.”

Knezic points out that laneway homes are expensive to build. The city found they generally cost between $300,000 and $400,000. So it’s probably too much to ask that homeowners make them affordable rentals, he said.

But, “if we’re adding density everywhere and adding units all the time, it’s going to work out.”

Knezic thinks investors will be drawn to the potential rent returns on laneway homes. That will persuade more to build them and eventually there will be enough housing options to stabilize prices.

Shira Packer and Leandro Dourado participated in the laneway suite community consultations and were excited to build one in their Bloordale Village backyard. Dourado, a contractor, was able to do most of the work on their 320-squarefoot laneway house, keeping their investment to about $100,000.

Built with a loft design, there is a bedroom, bathroom and mechanicals on the ground floor, with a kitchen, living and dining area upstairs, it rents for about $1,700 per month.

They expect to recoup their investment in about five years, something Packer said they never could have done if they had participated in the forgivable loan program.

“I love the idea of them offering that type of grant and I think a lot more people would be interested in that. But they also need to keep in mind that the maximum rents to charge were really low from a market perspective,” she said. “Maybe they could consider offering grants with fewer ties.”

For homeowners wanting to invest in a rental property, laneway suites are among the most economical options, said Packer.

“You’re saving a lot by already having the property you’re building on,” she said.

Like Southey, Dourado would like to see many more laneway homes. He imagines warm-weather community events and businesses such as coffee shops bringing new life to Toronto’s alleys.

“It doesn’t need to be all of them,” he said. “If they put a stand in each neighbourhood, it’s like, ‘Oh, let’s go to this night on this laneway. It’s going to be coffee shops or empanadas on sale.’ It’s so short this summer.”

I know how lucky I am to live here. The idea of being able to extend that luck to someone else … I hope the whole block gets filled up with laneway houses.

TABATHA SOUTHEY ON HER CABBAGETOWN LANEWAY HOME

FRONT PAGE

en-ca

2021-11-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-11-28T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://thestarepaper.pressreader.com/article/281685438118643

Toronto Star Newspapers Limited