Denley: To the detriment of older neighbourhoods, City planners push fourplexes and more human congestion

People chose single-family streets and paid a premium for it. Now, decades later, politicians are changing the rules of the game.

Published Apr 30, 2024 • 3 minute read

An example in summer 2021 of intensification in the City View neighbourhood off Baseline. Photo by Julie Oliver /Postmedia

City staff and councillors say they want your opinion on the idea of replacing existing single-family homes with four-unit buildings. But do they really?

Staff presented a complex new zoning report Monday that would enable the change, but all it does is bring the zoning bylaws into compliance with the Official Plan, the big-picture document that was passed in 2021 and already relies on extensive intensification of existing neighbourhoods.

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For city planners, a redo of the city’s neighbourhoods is a dream come true and their timing couldn’t be better. Planners and some politicians want to change every older neighbourhood, to recreate it the way they wish it had been done in the first place. In their imagined utopia, we’d walk or cycle to little corner stores that meet all of our needs. Rather than drive a car, we’d take transit, which would be magically saved by the miracle of density. If only the 1940s could be brought back again.

The problem, you see, is that neighbourhoods built in the last half of the 20th century simply aren’t dense enough for today’s planners. While residents might like a quiet, tree-lined street, planners long for more human congestion.

Some will recall that the city’s Official Plan was welcomed with less than universal enthusiasm. The original version, for example, suggested that Alta Vista would be much improved by having four times as many homes as it has today. Other neighbourhoods would have been similarly affected. After public outcry, the language was softened to talk about targets, but the intent didn’t change.

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And then, what luck, the immigration-induced housing shortage rose to the top of the crisis list and governments were desperate to do something, anything really, to combat the problem. Among the torrent of housing policies produced by the Doug Ford government was a new rule that a single-family home could be replaced by three units without any special planning approvals.

Not to be outdone, the Justin Trudeau government demanded that cities allow four units per lot and if they didn’t, they’d be shut out of a federal housing fund. The City of Ottawa took a slightly nuanced approach to this, saying it would propose four units in its new zoning regime, without committing to actually approving it.

Now, of course, city planners are pushing four units, even if it’s unlikely that the change will have much impact on the housing shortage.

In their presentation Monday, city staff said that in any neighbourhood, the expected lot turnover is 0.5 per cent a year. That’s not going to provide many infill opportunities, especially when one considers that the most likely buyer is someone who wants to live in the existing house.

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Then there is the question of who would buy these lots and build on them. By definition, that would be an investor, exactly the sort of person the federal government is actively discouraging by increasing the capital gains inclusion rate.

Even if investors want to proceed, they will have a tough time finding people to build these fourplexes. Construction labour is in short supply and the infill business is a boutique component of the housing industry. Meeting housing need requires mass production, not one-off deals.

The one thing supporters of what they like to call “gentle Intensification” have done is make it difficult to hold a contrary view. If you don’t want a four-unit apartment building next door, you’re just a mean person who doesn’t want to share your neighbourhood.

People chose single-family streets and paid a premium for it, confident that city zoning would keep their neighbourhood more or less intact. It’s not an unreasonable expectation. Now, politicians are changing the rules of the game, decades after much of the city was developed.

That might not seem fair, but when it comes to housing, the least important person in the equation is the one who buys the house and spends decades paying for it.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa journalist and author. Contact him at [email protected]

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