Build More Homes in the Yellowbelt, not the Greenbelt

Toronto, like many major North American cities, is facing a housing crisis. While prices for homes and rent have continually soared for years in Toronto, the availability of affordable housing has been on the decline. The decline of affordable housing has created many problems for the city’s residents and others looking to move into the city. For example, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp, 30% of households in Toronto that rent lives in unsuitable housing.

While the causes and solutions to the housing crisis are complex, one aspect of the solution should be increasing the housing supply to match the rising demand. But increasing housing supply raises some questions, namely, what type of housing and where should it be built?

If Toronto is going to combat its housing crisis, new homes must be built in the urban areas of Toronto (the Yellowbelt) rather than growing urban sprawl outwards towards the Greater Golden Horseshoe region (the Greenbelt).

What is the “Yellowbelt”?

The term “Yellowbelt” was coined by Gil Meslin and is used to describe the large area of land that is designated for “Neighbourhoods” by the City of Toronto’s Official Plan (refer a map pictured below). The Yellowbelt is primarily used to refer to the area defined by the City of Toronto’s Zoning By-Law as Residential Detached (RD) zone. This area prevents higher-density development (through the maximum height of 10 metres) and only permits detached residential housing.

In layperson’s terms, the Yellowbelt is made up of what is known as single-family homes, typically homes that have space between them, have front lawns, and have one family that rents or owns the property (refer to the picture below).

While the population of Toronto has been steadily increasing as people flock to the city, the Yellowbelt has not experienced the same level of growth as other areas. Almost all new intensification in Toronto is directed toward areas that encompass about 5% of the city’s area.

However, the Yellowbelt is massive; it takes up 200 square kilometres (the area of Manhattan is 87 square kilometres). The Zoning By-Laws have helped restrict the construction of new housing in the Yellowbelt in comparison to other areas of Toronto. But, it is clear that there is a lot of space and desire for intensification in the Yellowbelt. For example, adding one duplex in each of the 20,000 hectares in the Yellowbelt could provide housing for approximately 45,000 people.

The term Yellowbelt is also a reference to the Greenbelt for its role as a restriction on new development and stability of the existing area’s character and features. Yet, despite the space and demand for more housing in the Yellowbelt, some developers and politicians have proposed that rather housing and development should expand and be built further outside of Toronto, and outside the GTA, into the Greenbelt.

The Greenbelt and the Negative Effect of Urban Sprawl

The Greenbelt is a permanently protected area of green space, farmland, forests, wetlands, and watersheds that covers much of the Greater Golden Horseshoe. It covers more 7,284 km² than making it one of the largest greenbelts in the world (refer to the map below).

In 2005, the Ontario government created the Greenbelt with the purpose of preserving prime agricultural land as well as protecting rural areas, heritage sites, and the diverse ecology of the area.

One of the other main purposes of creating the Greenbelt would be to reduce the growth of urban sprawl. The idea was to limit the rapid expansion of Toronto and the GTA from sprawling into Ontario’s prime agricultural land. Urban sprawl is often criticized because it usually leads to environmental damage and does not have a strong impact in meeting the demand for convenient affordable housing.

In his book, The Rent is Too Damn High, Matt Yglesias writes about the cost of urban sprawl. He argues that cities face a financial cost when there is not a sufficient supply of buildings (including homes, offices, and workplaces) capable of handling a more dense population in places where the land or location is more valuable. Simply put, having more homes where land is valuable means the economic value of the home will be higher as a large part of housing prices come from being in a good location.

One of the major benefits of sprawl is that moving outside of urban areas typically lowers your cost of housing, however living outside the city is typically offset by other costs like transportation.

Living outside the city, transportation becomes more difficult as public transit is more difficult to access in suburban areas and people are typically forced to have longer commutes in their cars to work. This leads to people paying more in costs on fuel and transportation. It should also be noted that the longer commutes that come with more sprawl contribute to increased health risks like stress, neck pain, and loneliness.

Toronto’s public transportation system and the short time spent travelling or commuting is a key reason why living in Toronto is convenient for many people. So, relying on increasing urban sprawl into the Greenbelt would not be the best solution to Toronto’s housing crisis as Yglesias writes, “Even in cases where sprawl is a workable solution to lack of affordable housing, lack of convenient low cost housing is still a major driver of high living costs.”

The Benefits of More Density in Cities

If the provincial government is going to try to curb urban sprawl into the Greenbelt, we must look at the effect of building more homes in Toronto and increasing density would have on the city.

Similar to how the restrictions on housing in rural areas can create numerous environmental benefits, having higher density cities can also do the same. By having more people in a smaller area, large amounts of land for the protection and preservation of wildlife and natural agricultural land can be persevered, similar to the Greenbelt.

Public transportation becomes much easier as there are more people to meet the demand. If we were able to have more people live in an area where public transportation is a reliable way to commute then it would lead to an increase in taxes and fare to support improving public transit to make it a more successful transit system. A more reliable public transportation would also help decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

Higher-density cities would also lead to a drop in energy consumption, which has both environmental and financial benefits, because sharing a building with other people, either in a high rise apartment or multi-use building, leads to a spillover of hot or cold air.

It is generally accepted that high-density cities lead to increasing rates of labour productivity and other economic benefits. Because dense cities are more populous, they are able to support niche tastes and unusual skills that might not be able to have the same demand in rural areas, especially in modern service economies.

For example, art-house cinemas are usually located in dense cities rather than rural or suburban places because the movies they show attract a niche audience out of a wide group of customers. In comparison, suburban and rural areas usually have multiplex theatres that show blockbuster movies to a smaller group of customers. The large customer base of high-density cities is a reason why, as Yglesias points out, cities like New York not only contain more businesses, but they also contain more kinds of businesses than cities like Fargo.

The Unequal Growth of Toronto

While the population of Toronto is growing, the growth of the city is unequal in its distribution. As noted earlier, most of Toronto’s housing intensification is built on a limited part of the city’s land, and when the supply of housing is low this type of limited growth can lead to greater levels of inequality.

In a recent paper titled The Economic Effects of Density: A Synthesis, Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt finds that, while high-density cities are economically beneficial, when space is restricted and the supply of housing is limited, density leads to greater levels of inequality. His paper highlights that in denser places higher-skilled workers benefit from higher wages, but lower-skilled workers, renters and first-time buyers struggle with housing costs.

Because of the restrictions on more construction in the Yellowbelt, Toronto’s new housing units have primarily come from the increase of high-rise apartment buildings. From 1996 to 2011, approximately 60% of new housing units constructed in Toronto were in high-rise buildings.

These conditions of the housing market suit Ahlfeldt’s analysis on the rise of inequality in cities when housing supply is limited. In Toronto, we have seen inequality has grown leading to middle-income households moving out of the city.

In the influential report on rising inequality called, Three Cities within Toronto, J. David Hulchanski finds that since 1970 the population and incomes of Toronto’s urban core have been growing in income and in population whereas the middle-class area has been facing an increased cost and people are moving out of the city. According to Hulchanski, from the years 1970–2005, the percentage of middle-class neighbourhoods in Toronto has fallen from 66% to 29%.

The housing units being built in high rise apartment buildings are not meeting the demand for affordable housing from the middle-class population. It is important to note that out of all the housing units in high rise apartments built from 1996 to 2001 only 3.8% have three or more bedrooms. Thus, high rents and the cost of living have continued to grow which has spurred young adults and young families into having an increased interest in moving out of the city.

The Right Type of Density and the Missing Middle

Finding a way to increase density in the Yellowbelt, where there are restrictions to growth, that is able to properly meet the demand would be key to solving Toronto’s housing crisis.

The term ‘missing middle’ was coined to describe “a range of multi-unit or clustered housing types compatible in scale with single-family homes that help meet the growing demand for walkable urban living.” Missing middle housing types include duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, rowhouses, townhouses, and often low to medium-rise apartment buildings.

While these types of housing are common in dense cities in Europe, they have never been that popular in Toronto in order to preserve the character and stability of neighbourhoods filled with single-family homes. However, Missing Middle housing is designed to suit into Toronto’s Yellowbelt. So, unlike high-rise apartment buildings, Missing Middle housing seeks to add “gentle intensification” to existing neighbourhoods.

With the lack of available and affordable housing options for middle-income households, there has been growing interest among architects and urban planners into the Missing Middle housing to meet the demand for affordable housing. Embracing the Missing Middle can be the key to meet enough of the demand to act as a solution to the rising cost of homes and rent in Toronto.

The recent book, House Divided: How the Missing Middle Can Solve Toronto’s Affordability Crisis edited by Alex Bozikovic, Cheryll Case, John Lorinc, and Annabel Vaughan, offers an examination of housing in Toronto in the past, present and future.

The book points to the inequalities existing in Toronto’s current zoning by-laws like Official Plan Amendment 320. Mainly, the restrictions on building Missing Middle type housing favour the demands of current residents who do not want to see a change in their neighbourhoods, rather than residents facing increased living costs but who cannot find affordable housing.

Ultimately, reforming Toronto’s Zoning By-Laws to embrace gentle intensification through Missing Middle Housing in the Yellowbelt will give people living inside and outside the city more options to find affordable convenient housing.