Northern Light
Superstar
There is no new zoning reform being highlighted in your post.
Nor a specific example of a past reform being exemplified.
Don't become the new Walter please.
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Zoning Reform Ideas
- Thread starter A Torontonian Now
- Start date
There is no new zoning reform being highlighted in your post.
Nor a specific example of a past reform being exemplified.
Don't become the new Walter please.
Sunnyside
Active Member
Shooting in the dark here, if anyone has fulsome responses please dm/pm...
Hypothetically speaking, what is the easiest path for my friend Sally to put 3+ units on a SFH lot that can be sold for individual ownership? Sally is agnostic about what municipality this is in. Failing this, could a condominium be made to work on a SFH lot without running a loss? Again, if so, how/where?
I do also find this on-topic, because most new zoning changes (while great) are not suited to ownership arrangements. And Sally would like to avoid any need for subdivision applications and so forth.
Hypothetically speaking, what is the easiest path for my friend Sally to put 3+ units on a SFH lot that can be sold for individual ownership? Sally is agnostic about what municipality this is in. Failing this, could a condominium be made to work on a SFH lot without running a loss? Again, if so, how/where?
I do also find this on-topic, because most new zoning changes (while great) are not suited to ownership arrangements. And Sally would like to avoid any need for subdivision applications and so forth.
Auraz
Active Member
The whole concept of ownerSHIP is over rated...You are talking about air rights at this point.
Sunnyside
Active Member
Lol you don't have to convince me... It's Sally who's stubborn. I'm pretty sure BC has an air rights-like solution to what I'm asking, though.
Northern Light
Superstar
There has been much discussion on UT in the recent past of accepting a single elevator (or no elevator) in new multi-res buildings.............something I have vociferously objected to as an undue hardship on those
with accessibility challenges, including but not limited to those who use a mobility aid (wheelchair, scooter, rollator, walker etc.)
A story in The Star highlights that notwithstaning the presence of two elevators, there is currently no working elevator at Toronto's largest homeless shelter.......and that has imposed severe hardships on those who rely on said shelter.
www.thestar.com
From the above:
Clear as day to me, under no circumstances should one or zero elevators be acceptable in multi-residential housing with more than 3 storeys. Not now, not ever.
Even two can be problematic.........but one or none is nothing but high-risk, and cruel.
with accessibility challenges, including but not limited to those who use a mobility aid (wheelchair, scooter, rollator, walker etc.)
A story in The Star highlights that notwithstaning the presence of two elevators, there is currently no working elevator at Toronto's largest homeless shelter.......and that has imposed severe hardships on those who rely on said shelter.
Residents at Toronto’s largest homeless shelter left stranded after both elevators shut down
Toronto’s largest homeless shelter has been without its main elevator for five months. This week, the 581-bed facility’s backup, a smaller service lift, also stopped working.
www.thestar.com
From the above:
Clear as day to me, under no circumstances should one or zero elevators be acceptable in multi-residential housing with more than 3 storeys. Not now, not ever.
Even two can be problematic.........but one or none is nothing but high-risk, and cruel.
afransen
Senior Member
I guess the rest of the world, including Europe, is an unliveable hellscape. Or maybe there is room for nuance.There has been much discussion on UT in the recent past of accepting a single elevator (or no elevator) in new multi-res buildings.............something I have vociferously objected to as an undue hardship on those
with accessibility challenges, including but not limited to those who use a mobility aid (wheelchair, scooter, rollator, walker etc.)
A story in The Star highlights that notwithstaning the presence of two elevators, there is currently no working elevator at Toronto's largest homeless shelter.......and that has imposed severe hardships on those who rely on said shelter.
Residents at Toronto’s largest homeless shelter left stranded after both elevators shut down
Toronto’s largest homeless shelter has been without its main elevator for five months. This week, the 581-bed facility’s backup, a smaller service lift, also stopped working.
From the above:
View attachment 587681
View attachment 587682
View attachment 587683
Clear as day to me, under no circumstances should one or zero elevators be acceptable in multi-residential housing with more than 3 storeys. Not now, not ever.
Even two can be problematic.........but one or none is nothing but high-risk, and cruel.
Northern Light
Superstar
You do like being inflammatory.
I wish you wouldn't.
I didn't call anywhere a hellscape.
And I am the champion of nuance here at UT more than any other frequent poster.
But you obviously have little empathy for those with disability that you so easily dismiss being trapped in your unit or being trapped in a lobby for days on end.
Yes that does happen in Europe as it does here, and no its not ok there either.
But Europe has the (partial) excuse with older buildings than many literally pre-dated the elevator and that it is both cost prohibitive and impractical to refit every older dwelling.
In the case of new builds that aren't any excuses. And having had a parent trapped by disability I simply cannot be and will never be as dismissive as you and many others of the seriousness of that.
Nuance is not demanding an elevator in every 2s SFH; nuance is not demanding 3 elevators minimum............. nuance is not providing no elevators or defacto no elevators when you provide only one and its breaks/is out of service for days or weeks.
Undead
Senior Member
Think it's more of a building maintenance issue here. It shouldn't take five months to fix an elevator. edit: I don't mean to imply elevators should be eliminated. But that in this case the issue is complicated by what seem like abysmal maintenance practices.
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afransen
Senior Member
Maybe we end up with less affordable accessible housing instead of more by making it onerous to build small scale midrise buildings (8 storey/32 unit). How many ground floor units could we have in these buildings that do not even require one much less three elevators to be accessible. As it stands, the yellow belt is the preserve of inaccessible 2-3 story SFH. How many seniors with mobility issues stay in these inaccessible SFH for too long because they don't want to leave their neighborhood to live in a high rise with elevators.
Northern Light
Superstar
I certainly agree that a 5 month delay fixing the primary elevator is completely unacceptable, and there's no question that's an exacerbating factor here.
But I live in a comparatively well maintained complex with rents in the upper 1/2 of the range for Toronto.....and yet one of the buildings lost both elevators last year for a period of time (several days); that was a huge problem for large section of tenants living a building reaching double digits in storeys.
Additionally, my own building had an elevator replacement project about 2 years ago, one then, the other, with one elevator down for rebuild/replacement for 8 months, and the second for about 4 thereafter. During that time there was a maximum of one elevator available, and the older one, went down twice.
These things happen, even when government isn't the landlord, and they illustrated the necessity of at least having 2 elevators. Otherwise, when one comes up for replacement, you have no elevators for six months.
Northern Light
Superstar
The difference in costs associated with a single (extra) elevator in a midrise are equal to less than 1% of projected rent or sales price. Its not a material argument in my judgement.
My mother was able-bodied when she let her apartment above the ground floor, as so often happens when one gets old, she had a stroke, and COPD and lost the ability to walk without aid of a rollator/walker and even then, her ability to do so was compromised, as it was exhausting to traverse all of 50M.
You think of units in terms of where people in wheelchairs will sign up to live, but not in terms of where people who are able bodied become older and infirm or younger folks suffer injuries that are temporary but preclude use of stairs for weeks or months.
***
Fundamentally, we disagree in the strongest terms, and I don't think there's further fruitful exchange to be had here.
I think the argument you make simply isn't one informed by the real world, because you haven't had to endure what I and so many others have, and you don't get the challenge of having to evacuate someone you can't carry out of a building in total darkness (ice storm 2013), pitch black halls, pitch black stairs, no elevators, person who can't walk without a mobility aid......must be evacuated, no fridge, no microwave, a homecare refusing to show up because they won't navigate pitch black stairs and halls.
I see your argument as the same one that led to above.......why impose back-up generators on landlords, they only make housing less affordable? Well, the above is why it must be done, and if it drives up the cost of housing by 0.5% so be it.
We have far better ways to lower the cost of housing and to raise the incomes of short and long-term disabled, low-income retirees and low-income workers.
The answer is not unlivable housing.
picard102
Senior Member
But probably not.
afransen
Senior Member
If the savings are so insignificant, I suppose we wouldn't see the industry adopt the model even if it were permitted. Toronto is allowing a great deal of unliveable housing to be built as it stands by your standard in the form of very small units with inadequate kitchens that would do very poorly in the event of power loss for heating and cooling.
Northern Light
Superstar
And......I favour minimum unit sizes.
Which definitely would drive up the cost of housing, but I see no point in building prison cells, we ought to be making livable housing affordable.
IsaacKhouzam
New Member
I find the elevator question fascinating. Maybe it really is true that the cost of one or two elevators is negligible compared to typical midrise construction costs. But I wonder how the math would pencil out for a hypothetical 4-6 storey, 25-50ft wide (i.e. one or two Old Toronto single family house lots), five- to twenty-unit (i.e. roughly between one and three units per floor) building. Would the cost of an elevator be prohibitive? I think those of us who believe in looser rules around things like elevators like to imagine that in a more permissive zoning/building environment large swaths of the city would transition from being dominated by (inaccessible) single family homes to small (slightly more accessible) multi-family buildings. Something like what we might have had if Toronto had been built as a city of small apartment buildings to begin with. Much of Upper Manhattan comes to mind. True, these buildings would be less accessible than those with elevators, but they would be no less accessible than the status quo. In other words, we already have a city dominated by inaccessible housing; would a denser, but still somewhat imperfectly accessible city be worse? Better? I know what I think, but I'm certainly no expert. Any thoughts?