The Ford government is proposing new rules to make building a secondary housing unit — like a garden or laneway suite — easier and cheaper.
The proposal would create provincewide rules for additional residential units (ARUs) in an effort to prevent municipalities from imposing barriers to construction. The new rules would apply “as of right,” meaning a homeowner or developer interested in building an additional unit in a backyard or laneway wouldn’t need to get municipal approval.
The proposal comes after the Ford government ruled out imposing other as-of-right housing measures, such as allowing four-storey fourplexes on all residential lots, because it argues municipalities know best when it comes to housing and planning matters.
The province is considering completely overriding all municipal rules that apply to ARUs on angular planes, floor space index, and minimum lot size.
The proposal would allow secondary suites to be built as close as four metres away from the main residence and buildings to cover up to 45 per cent of a single lot.
Taken together, the changes will “make for simpler construction, and it'll make for better living units inside,” said Sean Galbraith, a Toronto-based urban planner.
Getting rid of angular planes and limiting the separation distance to a maximum of four metres are the most significant changes, Galbraith said.
Angular planes are a planning tool that leads to the creation of ziggurat-looking buildings. The thinking behind them is that instead of having all the floors of a building right up at the edge of a lot, successive floors are pushed back to cut down on shadows and provide more privacy. It’s the reason why many buildings in Toronto and other municipalities resemble a staircase when they reach a certain height.
In the context of ARUs, angular planes make it difficult to build a second storey where people — especially families — can actually live. Instead of a traditional rectangular room with four walls of equal height and a flat ceiling connecting them, the ceiling starts to angle at a particular height, creating a triangle-like shape. This makes the corners of the room shorter.
“You'll be able to have functional space for the entire floor and not be hitting your head on a ceiling,” Galbraith said.
Graig Uens, director of planning at Batory Management, said eliminating these rules will “put more bedrooms in ADUs” which will “be helpful in building more family-sized rental accommodations.”
“It shifts the priority from minor shadow impacts on a couple neighbouring properties to prioritizing having functional living space for the occupants of the garden suite or laneway suite. The difference is a shift in philosophy. It recognizes that the impacts on neighbouring properties are actually quite negligible in terms of shadow and we shouldn't be protecting for them,” Galbraith said.
Some municipalities have specific rules on how far a secondary suite has to be from the main house. This can pose a big problem for people who want to build secondary units on smaller lots, Uens said.
“This is a material change that will help people on more shallow lots build laneway and garden suites,” he said, which is particularly helpful in denser urban areas.
One of the other changes — allowing the primary residence and secondary suites to take up at least 45 per cent of the total lot — goes “hand in hand” with the new rules on distance between buildings and will also help spur more secondary suites on smaller lots, Galbraith said.
Since the Ford government ruled out making more significant provincewide changes to permit low-rise apartments on any plot of land, reducing barriers to ARU construction has been one of the main ways the government has tried to promote denser forms of housing.
In 2022, the Ford government introduced its most significant housing bill, the More Homes Built Faster Act. It legalized triplexes as of right across the province on a single plot of land. Once those rules came into force, up to three units were allowed on the lot’s primary residence, or two units in the main building and another in a garden or laneway suite.
The recently proposed changes would take those measures a step further and eliminate some municipal barriers that have stood in the way greater uptake.
“While we recognize that local municipalities know best when it comes to planning their own communities, the government has been clear that at a minimum we expect municipalities to allow ‘as-of-right’ the use of up to three units per lot in many existing residential areas. These changes support that goal,” said Bianca Meta, spokesperson for Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra, in a statement to The Trillium.
