By Pepper Parr
November 21st, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
To help with more housing options and supply throughout the City of Burlington, City Council approved a motion to declare its intention to allow four residential units per lot. This direction supports the City’s Housing Strategy to:
- help with a healthy supply of rental units and
- increase housing options.
This direction also builds on the City’s recent update to its Additional Residential Unit policies which now allow up to three residential units per urban residential lot. There will be community engagement on property criteria for ARUs and before more changes are made to the City’s Official Plan and Zoning Bylaw to allow up to four units.
What are Additional Residential Units (ARUs)?
Additional Residential Units are self-contained living units with their own kitchen, bathroom and sleeping areas. They are on the same property as a primary home, including single detached homes, semi-detached homes and townhouses. They can be inside or attached to a primary home, or in a separate accessory building like a detached garage. Examples of ARUs are basement apartments, attached suites, tiny homes and coach houses. The Additional Residential Units page provides details about how to apply for an ARU on your property.
Get Involved
Residents will be invited to join staff in their work to change policies and regulations to allow four units per lot. Staff will also consult with the public in their review of the existing standards in the City’s current zoning bylaw for ARUs. This may include what might be allowed for the height of accessory buildings with ARUs, such as detached garages, or parking space requirements.
Updates and opportunities to get involved in 2024 will be posted on the Housing Strategy Get Involved page.
Quick Facts
- In November 2022, The Government of Ontario passed Bill 23. This included changes to the Planning Act, allowing two Additional Residential Units (ARUs) on an urban residential lot with a detached house, semi-detached house or townhouse. Across Ontario, up to three residential units on a residential lot are now allowed.
- To comply with these provincial changes, the City updated its Official Plan and Zoning Bylaw Additional Residential Unit policies. These updates are in alignment with the City’s Housing Strategy.
- In the 2022 federal budget, the Government of Canada created the Housing Accelerator Fund to provide incentive funding to local governments encouraging initiatives aimed at increasing housing supply.
- In August 2023, the City of Burlington submitted its application to the Housing Accelerator Fund for approximately $40,000,000 and its approval is expected to be contingent on allowing four units-as-of-right on residential lots.
Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward: “Burlington City Council unanimously voted to allow four units as-of-right on any residential property. This is key to adding much-needed housing in our community. We know the City of Burlington has a role and opportunity to address providing affordable and attainable homes, and a wider variety of housing types. Our first ever Housing Strategy, released last June, emphasizes this commitment to realize our housing goals of 29,000 units by 2031. Allowing four units as-of-right will be pivotal in adding much-needed housing in our community through sensible development and growth.
“We will create a made-in Burlington solution to accommodate these units in an appropriate way in our city, with consultation with our community. Everyone who wants to live in Burlington deserves a safe and affordable place to call home.”
Links and Resources
Housing Strategy Get Involved page
Lets turn Burlington turn into Brampton South. I will turn my property into a four plex, rent it out and buy a nice home in Naples FL for $400K.
Too late. Foreign investors have already swooped in buying up everything they can. Ask the mayor about her pre-construction deal and the preferential treatment of her and Kearns family members. Too many conflicts of interest with this council who all have their own agenda. Ward and Kearns are beholden to developers who voted them in.
This was done with zero public input. Whatever your thoughts on having the house next door turn into a fourplex, we should have been consulted. Again, a total lack of transparency with this council which keeps talking about engagement. It’s laughable except that it’s not funny. And I guess the whole “protect neighbourhood character” mantra was also not true. Not that it really could have been protected (just ask the unelected and unaccountable Committee of Adjustment if they care a whit about that), but that was the promise.
It wasn’t done without public input. I was one of only 3? people who provided input. I happened to see it in the Post when we still got it. I doubt many even read the page as it was one of those dry public announcement written over everyone’s head.
The City Housing Strategy recommends that a fact sheet be included in any citizen consultations where common arguments such as decreased property values, increased congestion are put into context. I wonder what context might be required other than simply admitting that turning a bungalow property on a quiet street into a four unit property will obviously increase the number of residents in that property/structure, thus increasing the congestion of people and the congestion of vehicles looking for places to park and simply making the traffic volume higher? It also seems obvious that surrounding property values will decrease with these increases mentioned, and continue to do so as more as-of-right properties are converted on the street.
The context is that in Burlington we are no longer going to simply try to wedge more people into tiny spaces in high rises beside the GO Stations to meet our provincial commitments. We are going to try to do the same in every neighbourhood in urban Burlington.
Back in the ’80s we had single family dwellings and extra suites were not allowed. Then one extra was allowed. It went to two sometime early in this century, followed by three sometime more recently. Now it is going to four. Is this the maximum or perhaps are we eventually heading to ten as in the often used phrase “on a scale of 1 to 10”? And we actually thought we knew what a neighbourhood meant and that our Council wanted to help maintain existing neighbourhoods. Not so, it seems.
Our Mayor says we will have “sensible development and growth” and “we will create a made-in Burlington solution to accommodate these units in an appropriate way in our city, with consultation with our community.” We shall see.
Terrible decision by Council !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Be warned when you see an influx of tiny homes on residential lands etc. Liberal Mayor needs to be reminded who she works for and not the Liberals
Makes absolute sense. With uild out this should have been considered years ago.
So you think that neighbourhoods with homes with large properties should suddenly be subject to a 4-plex? Because those are the only neighbourhoods that you could build them on. That means everyone who bought in those neighbourhoods with a certain expectation of rights, because that’s what the zoning said, should no longer have any rights? As one of those homeowners, I strongly disagree and I will vehemently fight any application in my neighbourhood.
I should be exposed to a year or more of construction? Noise, dust, pollution. The infrastructure weakened. Who is going to pay for that? I certainly don’t think taxpayers should. Further, I have 2 schools within minutes of me. One a public school, one a catholic. So we’ll have 4x more cars on our little two lane street? It took years just to get stop signs and speed bumps to slow down the cut thru traffic. Maybe you think I should give up some of my front lawn to extend it to 4 lanes? I wonder, how is this helping “climate change”? Imo, it makes far more sense to build high rises. They use less area and house hundreds to thousands more people in a single building. There is nothing reasonable about dumping ugly 4-plexes in the middle of established neighbourhoods. And yes I do think it’d be an eyesore and don’t have a problem saying it. I have hundreds of townhouses / rowhouses north and south of me as well as 4 apartment buildings. My neighbourhood and the surrounding area is more than sufficient with respect to different types of housing.
I didn’t create the housing issues, its not my responsibility to solve it. The feds letting in 1.3 m immigrants a year (500 f/t and 800 students) without any thought to where they would live was completely irresponsible. Now shouldering that responsibility onto municipalities. Here, I’ll give you some money if you do this. It’s despicable. That is why this motion was passed. Because it gives the city a big chunk of money if they do it.
Worse, they have doubled down on the policy. At a time polls indicate the majority of Canadians no longer support these policies because of concerns of the effects on housing, healthcare, social services and downward pressure on incomes. You couldn’t pay me to vote for PP but Trudeau needs to go. Instead of allowing companies to pay subpar wages and supporting programs to import cheap labour, the feds ought to be encouraging these companies to pay living wages so Canadians do take them. Programs Canadian taxpayers are paying for. Do you really think companies like Tim Horton’s should qualify because they do. Economic reports state that you now have situations where professional Canadians are having to compete for jobs they’re qualified for because of the changes in who is being brought in. Many leading economists don’t support the feds continued reliance on immigration or their stated reasoning. MMW might be fine turning Burlington in a mini NYC, but most residents are not. Hopefully she will be gone soon and someone with a more reasoned perspective will set this ship straight.
One of the biggest issues with this is that this is a major opportunity for investors. They will swoop in and buy up properties big enough to accommodate these buildings. But you think that they are going to rent them as affordable housing? LOL. This will turn into investors buying up entire neighbourhoods, thereby destroying them, all the while contributing to un-affordable housing.
We already have over half of Burlington as other than single family homes. Duplexes, multiplexes, townhouses or row housing, apartment buildings, condos. If it inconceivable that neighbourhoods should be destroyed by this motion or Bill. Strong Mayors Act is undemocratic but this isn’t? That’s difficult to reconcile. I can’t wait until the liberals throw Doug Ford out and hopefully reverse this horrible trampling of home owner rights.