Plateau wants to stop duplex conversions
Plateau borough wants to put an end to the duplex conversions that abolish residential units permanently. Councillor Marie Plourde says that the borough lost 100 units this way over the last year.
-
Kate
Reply
Nicholas 13:07 on 2024-04-02 Permalink
That’s probably like 0.2% of the number of housing units. Presumably many of them are growing families that can use the space, and would otherwise move, potentially far due to low amounts of 3+ bedroom units. Either way, it could be easily counteracted by building a few more net units a year (yes, the Plateau is mostly built up, but there are opportunities, and not just empty lots but, and I know this is heresy, rebuilding some duplexes as 4-5 storey apartments).
Ian 19:36 on 2024-04-02 Permalink
A lot of people simply keep both addresses but occupy both floors. This is not a problem more rules will fix.
Ephraim 19:52 on 2024-04-02 Permalink
It’s like the no condo conversion rule… that created co properties, then created more rules for co properties, then created more laws to deal with co properties… when we could have just be realistic and let them convert to condos if under 5 units.
And now the newest thing, making rooming houses…. the city wants them, but doesn’t have any rules, so it creates $1000 a room rooming houses that the poor can’t afford.
Kate 20:28 on 2024-04-02 Permalink
Ian, the glimpses I’ve had of these conversions are not just a family using both floors. They usually cut in an interior staircase, remove as many walls as they can on the ground floor and delete the kitchen on the upper floor, and of course – pièce de résistance – put in a kitchen island with a breakfast bar. End result is not something you could easily revert back to two distinct flats.
Nicholas 22:06 on 2024-04-02 Permalink
There are two across the street from me: one they cut the wall to access the interior staircase (and put a large plant outside the non-used front door) and the other they actually walk outside and back in, usually in indoor clothes even in the winter. The city can not allow permits to do this, and it does mean you can’t claim both homes for the capital gains exemptions, but I agree, this won’t do much, especially given how small a problem it is.
DavidH 12:15 on 2024-04-03 Permalink
Some of these conversions are turning duplexes into intergenerational houses. We considered doing the same with our duplex, moving the grandparents in closer to our kid when they started needing help. That actually solves a housing problem even if the number of units goes down.
The way we would have done it is simply by putting a door inside between our front lobbies. Like Ian and Nicholas said, permit or not, it would’ve happened even without the city’s blessing.
PatrickC 12:55 on 2024-04-03 Permalink
I know of a situation where one spouse lives in the upper, the other in the lower flat because each of them needs peace and quiet. Works great for them.
Just the opposite of the unhappy pair in an old novel with the great title “The Semi-Detached Couple and the Semi-Attached House”
Ian 16:00 on 2024-04-03 Permalink
TBH my wife and I have fantasized about precisely that scenario, especially when we both had WFH.
Intergenerational actually makes a ton of sense, though. In the Hassidic community it is very common for the grandparents to live on the first floor and their kids’ families on the upper floor (s).
So let’s say instead, you have two units in a duplex that are 2 beds each, and you have 5 kids…
The problem is, as I’ve said before, that there are very few affordable spaces for families in the city, especially if you have kids – most people don’t want their teenage boys and girls sharing a bedroom, and I’m sure the kids wouldn’t much like it either, so if you have 2 kids you probably want a 3 bedroom apartment. Even if they are the same gender the convention of 2 kids to a bed has mostly fallen by the wayside.
The obvious solution, as Nicholas points out, is to build more housing.