Why a 4-storey apartment could be coming to a residential street near you

The task force asked to find ways to make Ontario housing more affordable wants to do away with rules that entrench single-family homes as the main option in many residential neighbourhoods, according to a draft report.

The nine-member Housing Affordability Task Force, chaired by Scotiabank CEO Jake Lawrence, wants to "create a more permissive land use, planning, and approvals systems" and throw out rules that stifle change or growth — including ones that protect the "character" of neighbourhoods across the province.

The wide-ranging 31-page draft report, which is making the rounds in municipal planning circles and could look much different when it's officially released Jan. 31, makes 58 recommendations.

It includes discussions on speeding up approval processes, waiving development charges for infill projects, allowing vacant commercial property owners to transition to residential units, and letting urban boundaries expand "efficiently and effectively."

It also calls for all municipalities — and building code regulations — not to make it just easier for homeowners to add secondary suites, garden homes, and laneway houses to their properties, but also to increase height, size and density along "all major and minor arterials and transit corridors" in the form of condo and apartment towers.

But perhaps the most controversial recommendation is the one to virtually do away with so-called exclusionary zoning, which allows only a single-family detached home to be built on a property.  

Instead, the task force recommends that in municipalities with a population of more than 100,000, the province should "allow any type of residential housing up to four storeys and four units on a single residential lot," subject to urban design guidance that's yet to be defined.

According to the report, Ontario lags behind many other G7 countries when it comes to the number of dwellings per capita. And housing advocates have long argued that more modest-projects — duplexes, triplexes, tiny homes and townhouses — are needed in established neighbourhoods, especially if the environmental and infrastructure costs of sprawl are to be avoided.

But neighbourhood infill and intensification is often a hard political sell. 

"While everyone might agree that we have a housing crisis, that we have a climate emergency, nobody wants to see their neighbourhoods change," said Coun. Glen Gower, who co-chairs Ottawa's planning committee. "So that's really the challenge that we're dealing with in Ottawa and in Ontario."

After last week's housing summit with Ontario's big city mayors, reporters repeatedly asked Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark if he supported doing away with zoning for single-detached homes, as other jurisdictions like Edmonton and major New Zealand cities have done.

Clark said he'd heard the idea but did not give a direct answer one way or the other.

Many of the recommendations revolve around making it easier and faster for builders to construct homes.

According to the draft report, not only would a streamlined process allow dwellings to get on the market faster, but reducing approval times would also save developers money which, in theory, could be passed onto residents.