Small buildings won’t solve the housing crisis. Canada’s cities need to go big

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You can’t fix a big problem with a small solution. And yet Canada’s major cities are aiming to do just that.

Toronto changed its planning rules in May to allow new multiplexes – small buildings of up to four apartments. Vancouver is now considering a similar measure. These changes are much too modest. These cities are delivering gentle density when they need to go big.

Canada’s housing shortage is huge. The country does not have enough homes today, and its population is growing faster than that of any other G7 country. Last year, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. estimated that Canada needs to build an extra 3.5 million homes by 2030, over and above the current levels of homebuilding, to achieve affordability in the market.

This is practically impossible, but we have to try. Alongside a huge expansion of social housing, this must be one of the country’s key policy priorities. Failing to do so only makes renters and homebuyers compete harder – and pay more – for each home that opens up. The economics on this are daunting, but they are clear.

This means a vast number of new homes are needed, and many of these should be in the cities where the most people want and need to live. That is, Toronto and Vancouver, the most expensive in the country.

Yet the planning changes in those two cities are not vast. They are tiny, deliberately so.

In each case, the municipal government has changed the rules in house neighbourhoods to allow small apartment buildings to be built. Toronto’s policy allows for up to four units in such buildings plus a bonus accessory unit, for a total of five. Vancouver’s proposed change, which will go to city council this fall, would allow up to eight units under certain conditions.

Vancouver head planner Theresa O’Donnell told The Globe that her city’s proposed policy change is “a very bold move.” In fact, her staff expects the new multiplex policy could create 150 to 200 projects – up to 600 new homes – per year.

That is a drop in the bucket. “Bold” it is not. The Vancouver region had almost 26,000 housing starts in 2022. That number needs to get much larger.

The City of Toronto’s new policy is marginally better; it imposes fewer physical and financial restrictions on new apartments than the Vancouver proposal.

But it’s unrealistic to expect that either city’s policy change will create enough new housing to make an appreciable change.

To be clear, these moves are in the right direction. In the past few years, advocates in both cities, including me, have argued more housing should be allowed in the low-rise neighbourhoods that make up most urban land. Until recently, apartments have mostly been banned; this is a relic of bad, classist policy from the postwar period.

But such policy has shaped city dwellers’ view of their homes. We are used to new apartment buildings pushed onto industrial land or busy roads. The idea of replacing a house with an apartment building – which is exactly what happened in our big cities 50 years ago – is far outside the political mainstream.

So a little bit of change seems like a lot. Municipal planners like Ms. O’Donnell, and the politicians to whom they answer, can’t even contemplate the scale of change that is possible.

Both Vancouver and Toronto have hundreds of square kilometres of house neighbourhoods that should be much denser. These often have emptying public schools, spacious parks and empty sidewalks. There are many blocks in Toronto and Vancouver that had higher populations in 1972 than they do today.

Unfortunately, this is tough politics. Rosedale and Kerrisdale don’t want to see new apartment buildings in their backyards.

Yet that is what needs to happen. Those neighbourhoods have the space, the location and much of the infrastructure to grow rapidly. Our local politicians push high-rise development to Burnaby, Surrey, Vaughan or Mississauga; Vancouver’s west side gets the occasional triplex. This pattern isn’t sustainable or just. Planners should stop tinkering around the edges and begin the real work of remaking our big cities.