Toronto’s “Missing Middle”: Will Expanding Housing Options be the Solution?
The Issue
People’s income level is becoming increasingly out of sync with the rising house prices in Toronto. According to Statistics Canada 2022, the median income of Toronto grew by 3% between 2006 and 2016, while the average rent in the primary rental market rose by 6.9%, and condominiums by 24.5%. While the cause of the housing affordability crisis is largely blamed on the insufficient supply of affordable housing in Toronto, the issue is far more complicated than that.
As shown in figure 1, Toronto’s housing market is dominated by two polarized forms of housing: detached single-family homes in the suburbs and high-rise apartments in downtown cores. The term “missing middle” refers to the missing option of low-and mid-rise housing — such as duplexes, triplexes, townhouses, or courtyard apartments (Figure 2) — in Toronto’s recent housing developments. These options have gone “missing” because they were not allowed to be built in many communities according to the zoning by-laws since the early 2000s. This blog aims to educate the readers on the topic of the missing middle in Toronto and provide an analysis of the opportunities and challenges of adding housing options in Toronto.
City of Toronto Initiatives
Expanding Housing Options in Neighborhoods is the City of Toronto’s initiative to address housing affordability by examining possibilities of expanding housing options in Official Plan-designated Neighborhoods. In recent years, the City of Toronto has attempted to expand the housing options through a series of planning frameworks and city-wide policy revision. In 2018, the City of Toronto allowed laneway suites in all residential zones within the boundaries of Toronto and East York Districts. These additional suites can provide gentle intensification of the neighborhoods with existing opportunities.
In 2019, the City removed restrictions on the zoning, size, and parking requirements on secondary sites. Secondary suites could provide accommodation for the household’s extended family or supplement the household’s income with rent. In 2020, the Official Plan was revised to allow gentle intensification in Neighborhoods. Only developments that retain the existing physical character of the community will be approved. The physical character of the community is determined by the street pattern, dwelling types, landscaped open space, and other factors.
Is Expanding Housing Options The Solution?
In the Expanding Housing Options in Neighborhoods report, the City addressed a series of issues that needs to be considered for missing middle housing to be beneficial to the city. The report touched upon issues like housing supply, affordability, and equity and asked whether adding missing middle housing would help solve these issues. Adding missing middle housing is thought to increase the housing supply, which in turn improves housing affordability. The reality is, however, that adding missing middle housing may lead to more harm than benefits without proper regulations and controls in development.
New York City’s Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD) released a report in 2021 that discusses the relationship between rezoning and affordable housing across different communities in NYC. The report categorized rezonings into two types: neighborhood rezonings and site-specific rezonings. The former is typically initiated by the government and results in an increase in the allowed density in the whole neighborhood. The latter works with a smaller area, typically just a few parcels of land to enable the construction of a specific project.
Neighborhood rezonings are shown to be less effective in supplying affordable housing than site-specific rezonings. Site-specific upzonings are usually initiated for a particular project, which offers more control over the price range of the new units. Neighborhood rezonings tend to result in more market rate housing due to its lack of affordability regulations. The study found that these new market rate housing actually impose harm to low-income neighborhoods. These neighborhoods typically have a higher proportion of affordable housing already. The addition of new market-rate housing will bump up the property value and pose the possibility of displacement. This indicates that the key to stabilize the rent prices is through proper regulation and rent controls. Simply adding new housing units will not solve the issue on its own.
Future Steps
It is clear that expanding housing options in the Neighborhoods is a nuanced challenge that extends beyond the addition of more multiplexes. Instead, it prompts a critical examination of the City’s zoning practices, housing development pattern, and policies regarding housing affordability. While a lot of work has been done on researching, consulting, and planning for the addition of missing middle housing in Neighborhoods, the City needs to establish sets of regulations and programs that will incentivize developers and community members for missing middle development to take place and to ensure the newly added units are affordable.
Different rezoning policies should be implemented on different community types to respond to the diverse needs. For example, in low-income neighborhoods, upzoning would probably not impose much benefits to the residents. In fact, it may pose possibilities of displacement and gentrification. What’s needed in the neighborhoods is controlled affordable housing and purpose built rental units. On the other hand, upzoning may be beneficial to neighborhoods with low displacement rate and moderate property values. The authorization of new housing options may contribute to building a more diverse urban landscape in the community. More study on the correlation between rezoning, built forms, equity, and housing affordability needs to be done before implementation.
Lastly, missing middle housing has implications further than the increase of housing supply. It represents equity and livability in a community. The City should work closely with urban designers and landscape architects to ensure the new development is sustainable and suitable with the neighborhood. To help construct such a community, construction and urban design guidelines should be incorporated into missing middle housing development. Some factors to include in the guidelines include the use of materials, built form, height limitation, floor area, and green space.
Conclusion
The housing crisis in Toronto is not caused by a single factor, rather, it is shaped by many complex and interconnected factors. Among them, the mention of the missing middle has become more frequent in the recent discussion on the housing crisis in Toronto. In response, the City of Toronto has initiated the Expanding Housing Options in Neighborhoods program to tackle this issue. However, as highlighted in the ANHD’s report, the mere addition of missing middle housing does not translate to beneficial outcomes for residents or alleviate Toronto’s housing crisis.
Effective solutions must involve a nuanced understanding of each neighborhood’s unique physical and cultural characteristics. Development efforts must proceed with sensitivity to these existing landscapes and consider potential negative impacts on community cohesion and affordability. It is imperative that any new housing developments are carefully planned to mitigate adverse effects on neighborhood dynamics and ensure inclusive and sustainable growth.
Chanel Chin is a Project Coordinator at Urban Minds.
