Home insurers operating in Toronto take note: you may have to soon provide insurance for laneway homes in the region.
As a measure to address surging home prices, the city of Toronto is looking to relax its bylaws on the development of properties on laneways. Earlier this week, a proposal went to public consultation which explored the possibility of allowing homeowners to construct a secondary suite on the edge of their properties leading into a laneway.
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The cities of Vancouver, Regina and Ottawa have previously permitted the construction of laneway homes, making Toronto the latest municipality to join the club.
“It’s not going to create a whole new crop of cheap houses that people can buy,” Lanescape head Alex Sharpe told
CBC News.
Sharpe is one of the co-founders of the policy groups co-ordinating the public discussion.
He explained that laneway homes would work similarly to basement apartments, allowing property owners to lease the secondary suite to renters. Compared to basement apartments, however, laneway homes would have more natural light and would have a greater degree of privacy, as a backyard would serve as a buffer between the main home and the secondary suite.
By allowing laneway homes to be built in the city, the move could—in theory—help both Toronto’s renters and homeowners.
A laneway home could translate into an extra unit that covers for a property owner’s mortgage, and could house adult children or relatives. In the long run, such properties could also help cool down the long-term rental market. Studies have found that supply for the long-term rental market has dwindled lately thanks to the rise of services such as Airbnb.
“We view laneways as an opportunity to expand the supply of units in existing residential neighbourhoods,” said Sharpe. “They have the services, [they] have the infrastructure, the transit and they’re well-connected. We’ve had a shortage of housing in Toronto in the last number of years and it’s growing in intensity because we’ve run out of land.”
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