A way to add ‘gentle density’
Architects point to Toronto’s slow, costly and sometimes confusing approval process to explain why homeowners like Mason can’t build in their backyards.
“People in Toronto talk about the missing middle as mid- rise in housing,” says architect Tom Knezic, who runs LNWY, a business that guides homeowners through the process of laneway structures, from zoning to design and construction. “To me, laneway houses are the missing little. They are a great way to add gentle density to the city, providing a different option than very expensive homes or tall condo towers.”
Knezic concurs t hat homeowners are often stymied when trying to build a laneway house. Since 2018, LNWY has received 68 inquires from prospective clients. For every 10, he says, only three actually meet the criteria. So far, a total of 12 have made it to the permit phase, the stage where they are ready to build.
Two rules in particular are proving to be particularly prohibitive, and they both have to do with fire. One, there has to be a gap of at least 100 centimetres between the main house and its neighbour so a fire crew can access the back laneway unit from the front sidewalk. Two, if there is no gap, the laneway house must be within 45 metres of the end of the lane, so firefighters’ hoses can reach the suite even if the lane is blocked by cars, garbage bins, bikes or other obstructions.
“These rules are here for safety,” says Knezic. “And that’s important.”
Others say the rules are too narrow and believe there are viable workarounds. Dean Goodman, co- founder of LGA Architects, agrees buildings should be safe.
“But for bigger commercial buildings, in the Ontario Building Code, you can double the distance from the pumping truck from 45 to 90 metres if the building has a sprinkler system,” he explains. “If that works for big buildings, why can’t it work for laneway houses?”
In one instance, Goodman successfully helped a client get a permit by appealing to the Building Code Commission and arguing that a sprinkler system is sufficient, despite the laneway house being more than 45 metres from the road. The issue is that Building Code Commission rulings don’t set precedents.
“We have other clients who are in exactly the same boat,” says Goodman. “But they don’t want to spend the $ 10,000 or so to go to the Building Code Commission. Which they would have to do in order to get their project through.”
Knezic says by integrating such solutions into zoning bylaws, many more laneway houses can get built. Even increasing the minimum distance from 45 metres to 55 metres would allow an average of four more laneway houses per block. Changing the side- access requirement from 100 to 80 centimetres could increase the number of permissible projects by 12 per cent.
“There are apparently over 130,000 newcomers to the city every year, but we only managed to provide, say, 30,000 new housing units,” says Knezic. “Laneway houses won’t solve that problem, but they may help. If 12 per cent of the housing stock is ineligible for the program, that is a significant loss of potential.”
Jutta Mason can’t get a permit because the access between her home and her neighbour’s is 86 centimetres. According to Knezic, that might be sufficient.
“While we don’t claim to fully understand the Toronto Fires access requirements,” he says, “we do point out that the minimum residential corridor within the Building Code is 0.86 m and in some cases may be reduced to 0.71 m.” Mason is more blunt.
“I keep asking the city to provide the specific data on which they made the regulation,” she says. “I haven’t seen it. But I’m not giving up. I have time.”
Architect Craig Race is co-founder of a design-build company specializing in laneway housing called Lanescape. Since 2014, Lanescape has been advocating for the city to change the zoning bylaws to allow for more laneway housing, working with city councillors and crowdsourcing i nput f rom more than 3,000 residents to inform the policy. Since 2018, the business has fielded interest from about 1,000 homeowners, and has had 20 projects get permits.
Even still, Race isn’t frustrated by the seemingly low carry-through rate.
“I would say it’s a little bit slower than we expected,” he says. “But not much. We’re also starting to see an acceleration of interest, as more architects and other consultants get comfortable with the rules, and the city starts to adapt.”
Race believes since the policy is still relatively new, it will take time to perfect. Last December, the city amended the bylaw so the side access didn’t have to be a right of way entirely owned by one party, but could be shared by neighbours as long as each party entered into a limiting distance agreement, where both neighbours agree not to impede the path and keep it open for one another’s use.
For someone like Knezic, that’s significant, because 25 per cent of his prospective clients had been turned down for right-of-way issues.
And sometimes, Race says, there are things a homeowner can do to meet the 100-centimetre gap.
“They might have to remove a bay window that’s on the side of their house in order to satisfy the emergency access,” he says. “And I know that’s a big deal, a big change to your house. But in exchange for that, you get to build a second house on your property.”