TorontoRealtyBlog
Are my blog posts too long?
Be honest. I promise, I won’t be offended.
When I started TRB in 2007, I was told by our expert web developer, who we found on Craigslist and met at Starbucks at Yonge & Wellesley, that a blog post should be about 200 words.
I said, “That’s insane.”
I was told not to reinvent the wheel, and that people have a very, very short attention span, and might not be able to get past 200 or even 300 words.
Ha!
That was 2007! If that’s true, then imagine what’s happened to attention spans since then? Frankly, I’m at word #104 right now, and I’m surprised most of you are still reading!
Eleven years later, I average over 2,000 words per post, and that’s honestly increased about 100 words per year, over the last five years. I’m not sure whether this is a blessing, or a curse, to be perfectly honest.
Ever since the newspaper went online, it feels like articles are getting smaller and smaller. Tell me if perhaps I’m just forgetting how much easier it is to scroll, than to read in print, but it feels oh-so-often like I’m only getting my feet wet in a given article, and then it ends, leaving me wanting more.
I feel this way even more when I’m reading an article about a topic in which I’m genuinely interested. It often feels like the surface has barely been scratched, or the piece lacked a response or a viewpoint from the other side, or there was just no depth to the article; merely a basic recap of a given event.
On Wednesday, I read a great article by Lauren Pelley of CBC News, titled, “Landlords, Housing Advocates Hope Council Loosens ‘Arbitrary’ Rules On Secondary Suites.”
Have a read if you’ve got an extra three minutes.
It’s girthy – almost 1,400 words! Yes, I counted the words, but as I said, I’m impressed by anything longer than 600 words these days.
In the article, we’re learning not only how the outdated, unaddressed rules on secondary housing affect homeowners (ie. the “colour” for the story – an actual person, with a name and a photo), the existing problem, the proposed solutions, and then the only thing that makes an article like this complete: the contrarian viewpoint.
Here’s the colour:
When Shelley Kanitz bought a small Toronto bungalow in 2016, she had two big plans for it: A massive renovation and a legal basement rental suite.
After spending nearly two years rebuilding the house from the ground up, Kanitz’s family — including her husband and young daughter — finally moved into their new five-bedroom, six-bathroom Danforth-area home this March.
But getting city backing for the rental apartment proved a bigger challenge.
Kanitz had gutted the basement and transformed it into a separate suite with large windows, high ceilings, and two entrances, ensuring it met the city’s criteria for a legal rental.
But she hit a major snag: The redesigned house was considered brand new, so it didn’t meet a time-based zoning condition that only allows homes older than five years to have secondary suites.
“In the meantime, there’s one less one bedroom apartment out there for someone who’s looking right now,” Kanitz said.
The mom and property manager is among those hoping the incoming city council will loosen current zoning regulations — which prohibit secondary suites in a certain types of dwellings in different areas of the city — to help both homeowners and tenants.
And there’s growing hope for change: Throughout November, the city is holding public consultations across the city to share proposed plans to “simplify” the process, while hearing feedback from the public.
“I think that we need to begin to address the housing crisis in our city, and I think that loosening zoning in Toronto is going to hit it two ways,” Kanitz said. “More affordable rentals for tenants, and the ability to qualify for mortgages for homeowners.”
Call me a cynic here folks (it wouldn’t be the first time), but I see the words “legal rental,” and I laugh.
In the world of real estate, that’s simply an oxymoron.
We could never actually find accurate, quantifiable data on this, but as an agent, I would estimate that over 90% of all basement apartments in Toronto are illegal.
Maybe more.
It’s conceivable that 19 out of 20 basement “units” in the City of Toronto, no matter how you define them, whether basement apartment, auxiliary unit, nanny suite, granny suite, et al, are illegal.
Why the units are illegal, is a whole other story. It’s a whole other level of insanity!
To be quite honest, and at the risk of admitting naivety, I will say that I always knew basement apartments were difficult to legalize, not to mention expensive, but I didn’t know how expensive until I read a Toronto Star article by renowned Toronto lawyer, Bob Aaron, a few years back.
That was quite easy to find, here:
“Extravagant Fees Crush Legal Basement Apartments”
Mr. Aaron regularly writes for the Toronto Star about all things real estate, but it’s his columns on basement apartments that have really stuck with me over the years. I’ll put together a list at the bottom of the post.
In the article above, written in 2016, Mr. Aaron wrote:
In the face of a serious housing shortage in the GTA, the City of Toronto is actively discouraging homeowners from legally adding one or two units to their houses by making it financially unfeasible.
Last week I received an email from Ben, who explained his dilemma.
He wrote, “I bought a house with my son with the intent of living in it with my wife (both retired) on the ground floor and my son and his family on the second floor. My son is carrying a huge mortgage on his half of the house. We thought two basement apartments would help him with his mortgage.”
They hired an architect at considerable expense to prepare plans to add a rear addition so that the house would have four dwelling units with two side walkouts, a rear deck and a new detached garage.
That’s when the trouble began. After spending a great deal of money on architectural drawings, and another $5,000 to the city to apply for building permits, Ben was told that his application triggered four additional fees:
- A development charge of $80,000 (that is not a misprint).
- An education development charge of $4,500 which goes to the Toronto Catholic District School Board.
- A parkland fee of $72,000 based on property value. and
- A road damage deposit of $2,400.
Ben calculated the total fees payable to the city, including the $5,000 permit fee, at $161,684 just to add two units, all of which is payable before a shovel goes into the ground or any interior work begins.
He wrote, “I bought a house with my son with the intent of living in it with my wife (both retired) on the ground floor and my son and his family on the second floor. My son is carrying a huge mortgage on his half of the house. We thought two basement apartments would help him with his mortgage.”
They hired an architect at considerable expense to prepare plans to add a rear addition so that the house would have four dwelling units with two side walkouts, a rear deck and a new detached garage.
That’s when the trouble began. After spending a great deal of money on architectural drawings, and another $5,000 to the city to apply for building permits, Ben was told that his application triggered four additional fees:
- A development charge of $80,000 (that is not a misprint).
- An education development charge of $4,500 which goes to the Toronto Catholic District School Board.
- A parkland fee of $72,000 based on property value. and
- A road damage deposit of $2,400.
Ben calculated the total fees payable to the city, including the $5,000 permit fee, at $161,684 just to add two units, all of which is payable before a shovel goes into the ground or any interior work begins.
There are those that will argue, “Hey, if you want something of value, you have to pay for it! Nothing in life is free!”
I hear that argument.
Except that, in my opinion, the applicant already owns the house, and has already paid land transfer tax, and continues to pay property tax.
An $80,000 development charge? A nonsense, made-up $72,000 “parkland fee?”
Don’t get me started on the fee to the Toronto Catholic District School Board. I wonder how the Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, and Anarchists feel…
This is why most people don’t apply for that “holy grail” certificate that tells an owner of a Toronto home that their basement apartment is legal.
That, and because I’m sure that the certificate itself would come with charge.
And that charge would probably come with a fee in order to pay it, much like the $75 feet that the City of Toronto administers when somebody pays their hefty land transfer tax bill, but I digress…
I suppose I’m opening up the argument that, “If people don’t want to pay for something, then they should just do it illegally,” and we can see where that gets us. This applies to just about everything we do and see on a daily basis, and you can imagine where it would lead. Don’t want to pay to get your car past the legal standards? Just drive it and hope you don’t kill somebody. Don’t like the workers safety requirements? Just hope they don’t fall off the scaffolding and die! And on, and on, and on.
But even my opponents here would have to concede that when you look at that list above, they are simply fees, and nothing more. Development charge, education charge, parkland fee, road damage deposit, and a permit.
And as Mr. Aaron noted, that’s before ANY work has started.
So why would anybody build a legal basement apartment?
That was rhetorical, or at least meant to be. Because they answer is, “They wouldn’t.”
And that’s the problem that exists in Toronto today, one that the City of Toronto is looking to address.
Of course, my cynical side will point to the fact that as always, the government is acting slowly and, as the CBC article explains, “Holding public consultations.”
My issue is not the fact that the government is consulting the public, in fact, I wish the government did more of that.
My issue is that, all too often, the government develops a committee, to put a panel in place, to commission a study, to advise consultants to make recommendations to create reports, to blah, and blah, and blah. And they spend tens of millions of dollars, often creating new government jobs, and probably awarding contracts in the world of favour-trading.
Soooo…….will the topic of basement apartments in Toronto be any different?
The example in the CBC article above is just so ironic! Because the Ontario Liberals last year sought to end “short term” rentals, in that it removes a full-time, long-term rental from the market, and yet this example shows us a woman who can’t legally rent her basement unit out, so she’s AirBnB’ing it instead.
Oh the irony!
Kudos to Ms. Kanitz for undertaking this “legal apartment” venture, although here she sits, having played by the rules, and learning that the rules in place don’t allow her to gain what she sought.
I understand the rule in place to “maintain neighbourhood character,” but if you can tear down a bungalow, which undoubtedly is adorned by two other bungalows (or two other McMansions), then are you really maintaining any character? How does an unseen basement apartment in a 3,000 square foot house trump the 3,000 square foot house in place of the bungalow?
Unfortunately, this whole situation screams “grey area,” and that’s a problem unto itself.
We can’t expect the City of Toronto to step in and make a hands-on decision for every application, based on a thorough investigation of the property, the neighbourhood, and the request. That’s why we have “rules,” after all.
So will this come down to a battle? “Housing crisis vs. character and integrity of community?”
Or is there a happy medium?
–
Bob Aaron articles on basement apartments:
July 10th, 2010: “RECO Decision Heralds New Rules About Basement Apartments”
March 16th, 2012: “Basement Apartments Must Comply With Zoning, Fire, Building, and Electric Codes”
March 30th, 2012: “Basement Apartments Are A Minefield For The Uninformed”
October 3rd, 2014: “Agents On The Hook For Illegal In-Law Suite”
The post What Is The City Doing About Basement Apartments? appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.
