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inbonobo · 8 years ago

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When architect Marco VanderMaas needs inspiration for solutions to Toronto's housing crunch, he thinks about his own childhood in the Netherlands, where he grew up in a unit on top of his parent's store.

What Toronto needs, he said on CBC Radio's Metro Morning, is more housing like that: homes that you "don't really notice" because they blend into the neighbourhoods where they're located.

"It's what we call the missing middle," he said. "A housing type that combines different uses."

Laneway housing a step closer to reality after community consultations

Now, VanderMaas helps design townhouses, duplexes, triplexes and mid-rise buildings that he hopes will build the same kind of community he experienced as a young person.

"It's something I want to get back to. I could jump on my bike and visit my friends, go to school, go to work," he said.

In Downsview Park, on land that had previously been used as a military base, VanderMaas and his firm, Q4 Architects, are contributing to a large-scale project to build 580 townhouse units.

"It's the largest urban infill project in Canada," he said, adding that he hopes the modern design being used will appeal to millennials.

VanderMaas has also been at work in Markham in the planned community of Cornell, a new home development.

"At Cornell, a neighbourhood similar to Riverdale and the Annex, we have live-work kinds of units, but also townhouses and single-family homes that have laneways in the back," he said.

Laneway housing is another favourite of his — something that's inching closer to a reality in Toronto after a successful public consultation last year.

It's all part of an intensification in Toronto's urban and suburban communities that he believes is inevitable — and should be embraced.

"It's not giving up anything, it's actually enhancing the quality of life. It is working," he said.

(via cbc)

Just after the school year began in September, York University teaching assistant Niloofar Golkar and her roommates got word they would have to scramble to find another place to rent because their landlord intended to move into their west-end Toronto townhouse.

It is legal grounds for an eviction. But, just a few weeks ago, Ms. Golkar biked by her old place and saw a sign out front saying it was for lease again. She looked it up online and discovered the landlord was asking $500 more in rent.

Ms. Golkar, 33, couldn’t be bothered to make a case before the province’s Landlord and Tenant Board, as she had already found another place to live. Still, she seethed over the deception.

“The city really needs to think about providing more social housing for low-income people, so we don’t have to deal with these individual landlords who can just do whatever they want.”

A Globe and Mail analysis of data from Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant Board, which adjudicates disputes, found that the number of applications for evictions such as Ms. Golkar’s has shot up 23 per cent since 2013 as tenants’ advocates say some landlords try to take advantage of the city’s competitive housing market.

The data also show a large increase in the number of landlord-tenant disputes over “above-guideline” increases, which are allowed for rent-controlled apartments after landlords do renovations or upgrades.

Disputes over evictions for simply failing to pay the rent have actually declined.

The numbers starkly illustrate the pressures created in a record-tight rental market that’s being made even tighter, observers say, as many Torontonians give up on buying a home of their own and choose to rent because of skyrocketing real estate prices.

Vacancy in Toronto is low, at just 1.6 per cent, and about 45 per cent of households are renters. The province’s rent-control regime, which is supposed to keep rent increases for current tenants at the rate of inflation, applies only to buildings constructed before November, 1991, after amendments made in the late 1990s by then Ontario premier Mike Harris that were meant to spur more rental construction. Even in rent-controlled buildings, once tenants leave, rent can be set at a much higher rate for new occupants.

Exactly how many tenants in rent-controlled apartments face eviction by landlords using false pretenses is impossible to measure. Even the Landlord and Tenant Board numbers are not broken down to show precisely how many disputes of this kind make it before the board.

But the number of hearings over evictions in the board’s “other” category – which includes evictions based on a landlord’s intent to occupy the place but also encompasses evictions for tenants who have damaged property, caused “serious problems” or overcrowded their units – has shot up in Toronto since 2012. There were just 1,740 such cases filed with the board that year. Four years later, in 2016, that number had risen to 3,054.

Disputes over above-guideline rent hikes also shot upward during the same five years, from just 91 in Toronto in 2012 to 198 last year. In both cases, the data present just a sliver of what is happening in the marketplace, as many such disputes never make it before the board.

Meanwhile, non-payment-of-rent applications have decreased over the same period.

Several renters who responded to a Globe online survey about their experiences in Toronto’s tight market also complained that they suspected their landlords had faked an intention to move in to try to get rid of them.

Geordie Dent, executive director of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations, said his organization has actually seen a decline in calls from tenants concerned about being evicted over not paying the rent, reflecting the strengthening of the economy since the financial crisis nearly 10 years ago. But he said calls about landlords threatening to sell or to move in and evict tenants have been rising.

“What we are seeing from our call volume is landlords wanting to cash in on the hot rental market,” Mr. Dent said. “You’re seeing more and more landlords saying, ‘Oh yeah I need to move into the place.’ And it’s totally bogus.”

Rental survey

Do you rent in Toronto? The Globe wants to hear from you. Try our survey to help us build a better picture of the city’s rental market.

It is even worse in buildings not subject to rent control, where tenants are unprotected from what in some cases are double-digit increases. In the city’s rental-condominium market, most of which are post-1991 buildings not subject to rent control, rents shot up 11.7 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2016 over the same period a year earlier, according to a report by consulting firm Urbanation Inc., while the number of listings sank.

Some condo renters face even steeper hikes. Heather MacDonald, 26, who works in advertising, was forced to leave a 400-square-foot $1,400-a-month Liberty Village condo after a new landlord demanded another $300 in rent: A 21-per-cent hike. She found a bigger rent-controlled apartment nearby.

“My concern is that there’s a lot of landlords and property developers who are able to do this to single parents and new immigrants who aren’t able to luck out like I did,” Ms. MacDonald said. “It was a very trying situation to all of a sudden be uprooted.”

The Ontario government has said it may announce changes to rent controls as part of a review of the current regulations, but has not revealed what reforms are being considered. A private member’s bill from NDP MPP Peter Tabuns recently called for the exemption of post-1991 buildings from rent control to be scrapped. The Liberal government has also floated loosening some rules on landlords, such as making it easier to toss out tenants with troublesome pets, in an effort to get more homeowners to rent out parts of their houses and increase supply.

John Plumadore, president of the Brentwood Towers Tenants’ Association, a rental complex popular with seniors near Yonge Street and Davisville Avenue, says the building’s landlord has for years routinely asked residents for above-guideline rent increases, after doing work on the underground parking garage and elsewhere.

Some seniors on fixed incomes have been driven out by the increases, he said. And the new younger professionals that are moving in are paying much higher rents.

Mr. Plumadore, who is chairman of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations, argues that improvements to the buildings, which increase their value, should be paid for by their owners, not the tenants.

Most of the time, he said, his landlord, a company called O’Shanter, lowers a demand for a rent increase after a mediation session with the tenants’ association. But residents can still end up seeing a 3-per-cent hike in the typical year, he said. (He adds that, despite this, he considers O’Shanter a good landlord over all.)

“The seniors say, we want to pay our way, but we don’t want to be gouged,” said Mr. Plumadore, a retired senior Scouts Canada official who has lived in Brentwood Towers for a decade. “The [increases] are killing us, because those of us who have lived here a long time, we like our building, we like our neighbourhood.”

Jonathan Krehm, a co-owner of O’Shanter, which has owned Brentwood Towers for more than 30 years, argues the increases are justified as landlords seek to repair aging buildings.

He said landlords are now being forced by safety authorities to install expensive new elevators across the city, for example, and should be entitled to recover those costs. Water and electricity bills have shot up in recent years, he said, and are grounds for allowable above-guideline increases. (He said any landlord who lies about intending to move into a unit has “no excuse for acting illegally or dishonestly.”)

But Mr. Krehm warned that more increases are coming to his tenants this year: He plans to seek “extraordinary” rent hikes to recover the costs of the city’s new landlord licensing fee, which is expected to cost $10.60 a unit.

“The biggest villain here is the City of Toronto, who discriminates against rental housing” by taxing it at about three times the rate charged to condos or single family homes, Mr. Krehm said. “If people were really concerned about the cost of rental housing for people who couldn’t afford it, they’d make the tax system equitable.”

Some tenants, faced with newly aggressive landlords, do end up fighting – and even win.

In 2015, Kerry Landry, 52, says he was forced out of an apartment near Queen Street East and Broadview Avenue that he had lived in for 22 years after his landlord announced that his daughter was moving in.

Mr. Landry, a project manager with the federal government, and his partner soon found another place nearby for more than double their old rent. But last year, Mr. Landry discovered that his old place was being advertised on the website Craigslist for rent, and for hundreds of dollars more a month than he had paid. He took his landlord to the Landlord and Tenant Board and after a contentious hearing won $10,000 in compensation – the difference in the rent he had to pay for the entire year.

“Myself and the landlord had a really good rapport before this,” Mr. Landry said, adding that he had faced very few rent increases over the more than two decades he lived in his old place. “… He [the landlord] was very hurt by the whole thing and so was I.”

Have you had problems with your landlord or tenant in Toronto? Share your story:[email protected] and [email protected]

(via tgm)

#toronto #urban planning #architect #rental #housing

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lovelyfantasticfart · 5 years ago

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sweetlyeclecticvoid · 7 years ago

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Real EstateCondo disputes can now be resolved online Ontario's new condo tribunal is accessible but will only mediate and adjudicate one kind of dispute to begin.Real EstateMake Toronto housing denser, say young professionalsToronto needs additional larger condos, more laneway homes and more duplexes, according to a board of trade survey.Real EstateAverage Montreal home prices reach record high in OctoberWith consumer confidence at a 10-year-high and a strong job market in the city, people feel it’s a good time to buy. Real EstateDetached Toronto home prices fall, while condo prices soar in OctoberThe average selling price in October was $780,104, up 2.3 per cent compared with October 2016.Real EstateZillow looking to add Canadian real estate listingsU.S.-based online real estate giant says it has no plans to build a Canadian site.Real EstateHow Toronto’s housing costs are hampering the city’s ability to attract talentThe cost of home ownership and rent is impeding young professionals' ability to save and pay down debt.Real EstateFirst-time GTA home buyers take to the skies in condosCondominiums house more than 20% of Torontonians and 13% of Canadians, according to the latest census.Real EstateNew home sales in GTA slower but no crash in sight: ReportNew lending rules could mean brisk new home sales in the fall followed by New Year slowdown, says BuzzBuzzHome.Real EstateToronto’s new condo guidelines are designed to create kid-friendly communitiesThirty per cent of households with children in Toronto live in mid- or highrise buildings. Downtown, it’s 66 per cent.

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insupdates · 8 years ago

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REID: Look to backyard housing too when talking laneway housing - Spacing Toronto

But behind-the-house housing (the term “coach house” can be used to describe all forms of this type of housing) can also be built in reasonably spacious back yards where there is no laneway. Bringing backyard housing into the conversation enables us to open up this option to a much wider range of Toronto housing and Toronto neighbourhoods, including suburban neighbourhoods. Backyard houses are entirely feasible. The City of Ottawa has recently approved detailed regulations for building backyard houses (PDF). Like the Lanescape proposal, Ottawa’s backyard houses are treated like a secondary suite, thus a rental unit that shares services with the main house. Only a standard walkway to the backyard is required. The guidelines set limitations on size and height to protect the privacy of neighbours. Backyard housing has been tried successfully elsewhere. Since renting them out was legalized in 2009 in New South Wales, Australia, the number being built each year has reached around 5,000 units. For last year’s “Housing” issue of Spacing, I talked to Sa’ad Ahmed, founder of Tiny Toronto, which is dedicated to making it possible for homeowners to build small coach houses in their backyards. He pointed out that just over half of Scarborough households live in a house on a detached lot, as do a significant number of households in other suburbs, many of which have backyards deep enough for a coach house. The value of enabling such building in the suburbs goes beyond simply increasing the number of rental units in the city. Toronto’s old city is in high demand because more people are looking to live in dense, walkable neighbourhoods with nearby shopping, amenities and transit on old-fashioned main streets. But the supply of such neighbourhoods is largely limited to the pre-1950 city, and the limited supply is causing prices to skyrocket. Through the Official Plan’s “Avenues” strategy, the City of Toronto is trying to extend that in-demand main street functionality, which supports improved transit and more amenities within walking distance, into the inner suburbs. But to get enough people in the area to achieve this goal, it won’t be enough to just build higher buildings along the avenue. The surrounding suburban housing areas also need to increase in density to support local retail and transit, just as the densely packed houses of the old city help to support streetcar lines and main street retail. As well, because they are new builds, units in “Avenue” buildings will likely be fairly expensive to buy or rent — it would be desirable to also have more affordable rental options nearby. The Official Plan designates these surrounding housing neighbourhoods as “stable”, but it’s useful to remember that even while remaining house-based, Toronto’s house neighbourhoods have never been perfectly stable. Cheap, slum-like houses were rebuilt into bigger, solid ones. Small houses were expanded with additions. Cottages along the lake were rebuilt as permanent housing. Mansions became subdivided into multiple apartments. Plenty of change and intensification is possible while maintaining a house-based urban form. As Ahmed says, backyard houses “can be a way of creating density in the suburbs without disrupting them.”

#Coach Houses #Backyard Buildings

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