Maroc - STOREYS.COM - A La Une - 28/Aug 19:33

Toronto Is Missing The Mark On Missing Middle, And 91 Barton Is A Prime Example

Toronto has been grappling with its relationship with missing middle housing for years. To say the least, that relationship is strained. Despite significant moves that have been made with respect to laneway suites, multiplexes, and more, the city is still experiencing growing pains when it comes to getting these more progressive housing types off the ground in an efficient manner. The story of 91 Barton Avenue is the quintessential example. To recap: the three-storey, nine-unit building with two laneway suites and one affordable unit proposed near Bathurst and Bloor has been before city staff on numerous occasions, and has been shot down every time. The proposed development comes from Green Street Flats — a Toronto-based developer that’s been focused on missing middle housing for the past six years, including apartments under six storeys, multiplexes, laneway suites, and garden units — and Craig Race Architecture. Green Street Flats Founder, Leonid Kotov, conveys to STOREYS that he’s baffled at how difficult it continues to be to manoeuvre the city’s current planning process and move projects like 91 Barton forward.Technically speaking, the three-storey building is permitted as of right, but what that actually means in planning terms is that the project needs to move through Toronto’s Committee of Adjustment to resolve any minor variances — and that's where things are getting stuck. First in April, and then again this summer, the project was denied by the Committee in two to one votes.LINK to our HNTO slides presented to TEY Committee of Adjustment in SUPPORT of "Minor Variances" required for a new build 11-Unit EHON development at 91 BARTON AVE which included 1-BDRM #AffordableHousing unit deal for 25-years.= ⛔️ DENIED..?!?!?PDF - https://t.co/yCnURsiMor pic.twitter.com/lOEzmRUCXl— HousingNowTO (@HousingNowTO) August 15, 2024 “It's a little bit more complicated than your single-family home, but it's not to the point of a rezoning, so it falls into Committee of Adjustment because it's a minor in nature,” Kotov explains. “I’ve found a pattern that the chair of Committee of Adjustment is very well-versed in policy and planning, but depending on the panel, they're not necessarily well versed in it, so they might look at something [like 91 Barton] and say, ‘oh, wow, this is a lot of variances… therefore its not minor, it's too many little things.’ But, when you take one step back, it's just the way that the bylaw is getting interpreted.”With 91 Barton, there have been a plethora of minor variances up to the Committee of Adjustment to parse through and resolve. For example, between the first and second meetings in April and July, the project has hit walls because the Committee felt it “was a great project, but just not here.” In addition, the argument was that the laneway needed to be widened by 22 centimetres per parameters put forth by the City’s transportation department. “They've been really, really great,” Kotov stresses, when speaking to his experience working with the transportation department in particular. Still, he says, the approval process in general has been arduous. And while Kotov says that Green Street Flats will continue to move forward with 91 Barton in spite of these planning hurdles, he also touches on the fact that there is a much bigger problem when it comes missing middle housing, and the way that Toronto approaches it. Graig Uens is Director of Planning at Batory Management, and he's working with Green Street Flats on the 91 Barton proposal. His thoughts on the missing middle matter are somewhat mixed. The process associated with approving these types of, arguably unassuming, housing projects are fundamentally flawed, he says, and in desperate need of a shake-up.“You’re not going to write a zoning bylaw that’s going to capture every lot configuration and peculiarity and lots across the city, so people are going to have to go through the Committee of Adjustment. But we’ve got to create a supportive regulatory and process environment for these kind of missing middle projects to go through,” Uens says. “I think there's a real opportunity here for the city to say, maybe there are certain things that the Committee process isn't suited for, and maybe there's another process that falls somewhere between a zoning amendment and the Committee of Adjustment that will give people the due consideration for these kinds of proposals, which are inherently more complicated than a garden shed or a sunroom where you need a setback variance, but they're not nearly as complicated as a mid-rise building or a tower.”“That's, I think, a meaningful thing the city could advance in the short-term, and and it would create a lot more comfort for people that want to pursue these proposals,” he adds. Uens knows what he’s talking about; he spent some 14 years in Toronto’s planning department, and during that time, he was immersed in delivering in the Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods initiative under former Toronto mayor John Tory, which eventually led to the legalization of laneway suites, garden suites, and multiplexes. Something else Uens speaks to is his scepticism on the Committee of Adjustment makeup. Again, he feels it's systemically flawed. As it currently stands, just four people are in the Committee at a time, and the chair, despite typically being the most experienced of the group, doesn’t get a deciding vote. This is a big part of the reason that 91 Barton has been rejected twice, as a result of two to one votes. That's all to say that there’s plenty of room for improvement when it comes to missing middle, and how the City of Toronto approaches this housing type. And it's important work, Uens emphasizes. Missing middle housing “adds to housing choice,” he says. “It gives people another option for an apartment type unit in a neighbourhood that isn't in a converted house or in a basement, and that’s suited to different family structures or incomes, different household sizes. But our processes have to change or there needs to be other processes to look at this stuff to make sure the outcomes better align with what everybody at every level of politics is saying these days: that we need more housing for people, and we need more housing period.”