A laneway house is a form of detached secondary suites in Canada built into pre-existing lots, usually in the backyard and opening onto the back lane. Most laneway houses are small. However, public concern has been raised in some communities about the impact that larger forms of this type of housing may have on privacy. [1] Laneway houses are found in densely populated areas in Canadian cities, including Edmonton, Toronto, and Vancouver.
In Edmonton, laneway homes are called garden suites and the numbers keep increasing as the City changes bylaws to increase density. [2] The suites are very popular as Airbnb properties, as retirement homes and for mortgage helpers.[ vague ]
During the 19th century, back lanes were used by Toronto residents to house accessory buildings, including garages, storage units and/or stables. [3] A number of these stables were mews, which included a residential area on its upper levels. [4]
The earliest modern laneway home was built in 1989 at Kensington Market, and was designed by Jeffrey Stinston, a professor at the University of Toronto's John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. [5] Another early example of a modern laneway home includes one built by Shim-Sutcliffe Architects in Leslieville in 1992. [3] The architectural firm received approval for the design from the Ontario Municipal Board, after the firm promoted the housing form as a method to take advantage of unutilized spaces. [3] By 2005, there were approximately several dozen laneway homes in Toronto, including several that were raised illegally. [4] The development of laneway houses in Toronto resulted in the municipal government reviewing their impact on services and their safety in 2006. [6]
Construction of laneway homes in Toronto remained limited until 2018, with earlier by-laws requiring property owners to gain the approval of the municipal planning department before they can build a laneway home. [7] In 2018, the municipal government of Toronto approved a zoning amendment by-law to permit the development of laneway suites on all properties that has a residential designation. [3] [8] The amendment was a response to growing concern around affordable housing, and as an effort to promote "gentle densification" by tapping into roughly 2400 publicly owned laneways spread across the city. [9] As a result of the by-law, there exists approximately 257 kilometres (160 mi) of laneways where laneway houses may be built in the city. [10] The majority of these laneways are situated in the old City of Toronto and East York. [10] [11] The municipal government of Toronto also launched the "Laneway Suites Pilot Program" in 2018, providing financial assistance to property owners that build laneway houses for rent, on the condition that the property owner can not raise the price of rent past the city's average market rent for 15 years after it is completed. [3]
Toronto-based architects and architectural firms that have designed laneway houses in the city includes Lanescape, Donald Schmitt, LGA Architectural Partners, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, and Superkül. [7] [12] Toronto-based builders specializing in laneway houses in the city includes Laneway Home Building Experts and 2x2 Construction, who is estimated to build 10-12 Laneway Homes in 2022 alone. [13]
The introduction to Vancouver of this form of housing was part of an initiative by former Mayor Sam Sullivan, as part of his council's EcoDensity initiative to increase urban density in pre-existing neighbourhoods while retaining the single-family feel of the neighbourhood. [14] Vancouver's average laneway house is 550 square feet (51 m2), one and a half stories, with one or two bedrooms. [15] Typical regulations require that the laneway home is built in the back half of a traditional lot in the space that is normally reserved for a garage. [16]
In December 2009, the Sustainable Laneway House project began. BC Hydro Power Smart joined Simon Fraser University and the City of Vancouver in championing the project. A host of industrial partners joined the effort by providing expertise, materials and labour, including Smallworks Studio and Laneway Housing, Fortin Terasen Gas, Embedded Automation, Day4 Energy, VerTech Solutions, MSR Innovations and Pulse Energy. Westhouse was showcased at the Yaletown LiveCity site during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic games to over 66,000 people and subsequently moved to its current semi-permanent site at SFU. [17]
Vancouver's first laneway house to be completed under the 2009 laneway house bylaw was the Mendoza Lane House by Lanefab Design/Build. [18] The Mendoza lane house is 710sf and was built on a 33'x122' lot and features a single outdoor parking space. The project was granted an occupancy permit by the City of Vancouver in May 2010. [19] One of the top Vancouver-based laneway construction companies, home wealth investments, specializes in affordable-cost effective home construction. [20]
The first unsubsidized 'net zero' solar-powered laneway house was completed in 2012. [21]
In July 2013, an updated set of rules governing laneway house design in Vancouver went into effect. [22] The July 2013 rule update was aimed at making it easier to build one-storey laneway houses, and to address concerns about parking and the use of garages.
Like Toronto, housing affordability is an important issue in Vancouver, due to the high density of population in the city. [23]
While the EcoDensity Charter is no longer applicable in Vancouver due to the current council's updated strategies on affordability and Greenest City initiatives, [24] initial concerns around laneway housing and affordability that related to the EcoDensity Charter remain. The approach from the Charter was to increase the supply of housings to help moderate house prices and to reduce the living costs from transportation and energy.
As of 2023 in British Columbia, housing policy changes are coming that aim to simplify regulations, increase design choices, and promote Missing Middle Housing, making it easier to build laneway homes and navigate the permit process for a more inclusive and adaptable housing landscape. [25]
In urban planning, zoning is a method in which a municipality or other tier of government divides land into "zones", each of which has a set of regulations for new development that differs from other zones. Zones may be defined for a single use, they may combine several compatible activities by use, or in the case of form-based zoning, the differing regulations may govern the density, size and shape of allowed buildings whatever their use. The planning rules for each zone determine whether planning permission for a given development may be granted. Zoning may specify a variety of outright and conditional uses of land. It may indicate the size and dimensions of lots that land may be subdivided into, or the form and scale of buildings. These guidelines are set in order to guide urban growth and development.
A residential area is a land used in which housing predominates, as opposed to industrial and commercial areas.
Inclusionary zoning (IZ) is municipal and county planning ordinances that require or provide incentives when a given percentage of units in a new housing development be affordable by people with low to moderate incomes. Such housing is known as inclusionary housing. The term inclusionary zoning indicates that these ordinances seek to counter exclusionary zoning practices, which exclude low-cost housing from a municipality through the zoning code. Non-profit affordable housing developers build 100% of their units as affordable, but need significant taxpayer subsidies for this model to work. Inclusionary zoning allows municipalities to have new affordable housing constructed without taxpayer subsidies. In order to encourage for-profit developers to build projects that include affordable units, cities often allow developers to build more total units than their zoning laws currently allow so that there will be enough profit generating market-rate units to offset the losses from the below market-rate units and still allow the project to be financially feasible. Inclusionary zoning can be mandatory or voluntary, though the great majority of units have been built as a result of mandatory programmes. There are variations among the set-aside requirements, affordability levels, and length of time the unit is deed-restricted as affordable housing.
The Comprehensive Permit Act is a Massachusetts law which allows developers of affordable housing to override certain aspects of municipal zoning bylaws and other requirements. It consists of Massachusetts General Laws (M.G.L.) Chapter 40B, Sections 20 through 23, along with associated regulations issued and administered by the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development. Chapter 40B was enacted in 1969 to address the shortage of affordable housing statewide by reducing barriers created by local municipal building permit approval processes, local zoning, and other restrictions. Its goal is to encourage the production of affordable housing in all communities throughout the Commonwealth.
A duplex house plan has two living units attached to each other, either next to each other as townhouses, condominiums or above each other like apartments. By contrast, a building comprising two attached units on two distinct properties is typically considered semi-detached or twin homes but is also called a duplex in parts of the Northeastern United States, Western Canada, and Saudi Arabia.
The YIMBY movement is a pro-infrastructure development movement mostly focusing on public housing policy, real estate development, public transportation, and pedestrian safety in transportation planning, in contrast and in opposition to the NIMBY movement that generally opposes most forms of urban development in order to maintain the status quo. As a popular organized movement in the United States, it began in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 2010s amid a major housing affordability crisis and has subsequently become a potent political force in state and local politics across the United States.
Affordable housing is housing which is deemed affordable to those with a household income at or below the median as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index. Most of the literature on affordable housing refers to mortgages and a number of forms that exist along a continuum – from emergency homeless shelters, to transitional housing, to non-market rental, to formal and informal rental, indigenous housing, and ending with affordable home ownership.
Mixed use is a type of urban development, urban design, urban planning and/or a zoning classification that blends multiple uses, such as residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or entertainment, into one space, where those functions are to some degree physically and functionally integrated, and that provides pedestrian connections. Mixed-use development may be applied to a single building, a block or neighborhood, or in zoning policy across an entire city or other administrative unit. These projects may be completed by a private developer, (quasi-)governmental agency, or a combination thereof. A mixed-use development may be a new construction, reuse of an existing building or brownfield site, or a combination.
A rooming house, also called a "multi-tenant house", is a "dwelling with multiple rooms rented out individually", in which the tenants share kitchen and often bathroom facilities. Rooming houses are often used as housing for low-income people, as rooming houses are the least expensive housing for single adults. Rooming houses are usually owned and operated by private landlords. Rooming houses are better described as a "living arrangement" rather than a specially "built form" of housing; rooming houses involve people who are not related living together, often in an existing house, and sharing a kitchen, bathroom, and a living room or dining room. Rooming houses in this way are similar to group homes and other roommate situations. While there are purpose-built rooming houses, these are rare.
Secondary suites (also known as accessory dwelling units (ADU), in-law apartments, granny flats, granny annexes or garden suites) are self-contained apartments, cottages, or small residential units, that are located on a property that has a separate main, single-family home, duplex, or other residential unit. In some cases, the ADU or in-law is attached to the principal dwelling or is an entirely separate unit, located above a garage, across a carport, or in the backyard on the same property. Reasons for wanting to add a secondary suite to a property may be to receive additional income, provide social and personal support to a family member, or obtain greater security.
The EcoDensity Initiative was officially launched in 2006 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in conjunction with the World Urban Forum. The initiative was a response to deconcentration of urban land use due to urban sprawl. The initiative used density, design and land use as catalysts towards livability, affordability and environmental sustainability. Some of the program's objectives were to reduce car reliance, deliver more efficient urban land use, improve green energy systems and build a resilient and adaptable community. In high-density urban areas, utilizing the existing infrastructure and transit and community amenities tends to lead towards a more sustainable and livable state. Accordingly, EcoDensity was designed to strategically enhance densification with the primary aim of efficiently structured neighbourhoods, denser urban-patterns and increased affordable housing.
Vancouverism is an urban planning and architectural phenomenon in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is characterized by a large residential population living in the city centre with mixed-use developments, typically with a medium-height, commercial base and narrow, high-rise residential towers, significant reliance on mass public transit, creation and maintenance of green park spaces, and preserving view corridors. The architect Bing Thom described Vancouverism this way:
It's a spirit about public space. I think Vancouverites are very, very proud that we built a city that really has a tremendous amount of space on the waterfront for people to recreate and to enjoy. At the same time, False Creek and Coal Harbour were previously industrial lands that were very polluted and desecrated. We've refreshed all of this with new development, and people have access to the water and the views. So, to me, it's this idea of having a lot people living very close together, mixing the uses. So, we have apartments on top of stores. In Surrey we have a university on top of a shopping centre. This mixing of uses reflects Vancouver in terms of our culture and how we live together.
A secondary suite is a self contained dwelling, sometimes attached to the main dwelling, sometimes separate, which can be offered for rent to a third party by the owner/occupier. Some Canadian municipalities permit these while others do not, and rules vary as to what sort of dwellings are permitted to have secondary suites and what forms they may take.
The tiny-house movement is an architectural and social movement promoting the reduction and simplification of living spaces. According to the International Residential Code, a tiny house’s floorspace is no larger than 400 square feet (37 m2). Proponents suggest that tiny homes could offer low-cost, eco-friendly alternatives within the housing market and serve as a transitional housing option for homeless individuals.
Graffiti in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a cause of much disagreement among its residents. Graffiti is seen by some as an art form adding to the Toronto culture; however, others see graffiti as form of vandalism, viewing it as ugly, or as a form of property damage.
Affordable housing in Canada is living spaces that are deemed financially accessible to those with a median household income in Canada. The property ladder continuum of affordable housing in Canada includes market, non-market, and government-subsidized housing.
Missing middle housing refers to a lack of medium-density housing in the North American context. The term describes an urban planning phenomenon in Canada, the United States, Australia and more recent developments in industrialised and newly industrialising countries due to zoning regulations favoring social and racial separation and car-dependent suburban sprawl.
Starting in the 1990s, the city of San Franciscoand the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area have faced a serious housing shortage. Such is that in October 2015, San Francisco had the highest rents of any major US city. San Francisco has the slowest permitting process of any large city in the United States. The first stage can take an average of 450 calendar days, and the second stage taking 630 days for typical multi-family housing, or 860 days for a single-family house, and the second-most expensive construction costs in the world.
Single-family zoning is a type of planning restriction applied to certain residential zones in the United States and Canada in order to restrict development to only allow single-family detached homes. It disallows townhomes, duplexes, and multifamily housing (apartments) from being built on any plot of land with this zoning designation.
Colleen Hardwick is a Canadian politician and film-maker in Vancouver, British Columbia, who served on Vancouver City Council from 2018 to 2022. Hardwick is the daughter of former Vancouver alderman Walter Hardwick, and granddaughter of former Vancouver park commissioner Iris Hardwick.