Stacked housing provides solution to urban sprawl

When the Hampshire Mews townhomes hit the market in Richmond Hill about four years ago, the buyers weren’t exactly lined up at the developer’s door.

“It took a little while for people to get their heads around the product type,” said Bob Finnigan of Herity Homes, which owned the two-acre site near Yonge St. and Elgin Mills Rd.

It was the conventional townhouses in the complex, with a garage in the front and a patio at the back, that sold first. The stacked towns — 42 of the 60 units — were a newer commodity. They had less outdoor space and the garage was at the rear. Hampshire Mews was among the first stacked town developments in Richmond Hill and the first for Herity’s Heathwood Homes division.

But in the two years since the Mews was built, that format has been increasingly recognized as an important solution in creating the population densities the province demands through its recently updated growth plan, which is designed to curb urban sprawl by putting people closer to transit and urban amenities.

Stacked and back-to-back towns are increasingly affordable, a key building block in what planners refer to as the missing middle of housing.

Built to provide an option between highrise and single-family detached houses, stacked towns are more familiar to buyers now, said Finnigan, a past president of the Canadian Home Builders Association.

“This would sell faster (today) because people understand what’s available. If they go from a 600square-foot or 700-square-foot apartment to ground level (homes), this helps them make that transition,” he said.

It’s a myth that builders only want to construct single-family detached homes, he said. The profit on stacked towns is about the same because you can put more homes on the same piece of land — about twice as many as conventional towns.