Could a housing revolution transform Canadian cities?

While Toronto is now moving forward with fourplexes, its housing history is a useful guide to the issue. Put simply, new-build fourplexes were banned in the city from 1929 to 2023.

Instead, under previous zoning laws, large swaths of residential areas in Toronto were put aside for single-family occupancy detached and semi-detached houses.

It was a similar picture in other Anglophone Canadian cities. By contrast, in Montreal fourplexes and other small apartment buildings have always been more common.

“Toronto had specific regulations to defend single-family neighbourhoods,” explains Alex Bozikovic, author of House Divided: How the Missing Middle Will Solve Toronto’s Affordability Crisis.

“There was classism at play here, as the 1910s saw policy that separated where homes and apartments could be built, as there was the perception that apartments bring the ‘wrong’ sorts of people into the neighbourhood, like immigrants.”

Mr Bozikovic adds that the situation is now changing thanks to the pressure from the federal government. “Minister Fraser is using funding and a bully pulpit to push municipalities to make necessary changes, because the government sees fourplexes as a palatable immediate solution to the affordable housing crisis,” he says.

“The questions for Canada become, ‘is this the answer?’, or ‘is this the only the first step to much larger reforms?’”