Webinar August 2026: Housing Policy Update
From Policy to Practice: What Toronto's Zoning Reforms Actually Mean for Developers and Landowners
For August's session, Trainex Hub brought together two practitioners working at the intersection of planning policy and on-the-ground development. Paul Demczak, Principal at Batori Planning and Management and a registered professional planner with more than 15 years of experience across the GTA, walked through Toronto's evolving zoning framework in detail. Dr. Amin Sarang, founder and CEO of DevNext, followed with a developer's perspective — translating those policies into the realities of project delivery, team assembly, and the tools now available to landowners.
The message from both speakers was consistent: Toronto has undergone more meaningful planning reform in the last eight years than in the two decades before it. The window is open — but navigating it requires understanding what the policy actually permits, where the process still catches applicants off guard, and what it takes to get a project approved rather than deferred.
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Eight Years of Reform, Compressed
Demczak opened with a timeline that illustrated just how rapidly Toronto's residential zoning landscape has shifted since 2018. Laneway suites, secondary suites, garden suites, the removal of all parking minimums, rooming house updates, as-of-right multiplexes at 4 and then 6 units, development charge relief, neighbourhood retail, major street apartments, expanded avenues permissions — the list runs long, and it continues to move.
"When I started my career in the early 2000s, right up until 2018, many of the changes in the City of Toronto were extremely slow and extremely incremental. What's happened since 2018 to now has been a significant number of changes — and we've tried to be at the forefront of that as a planning firm."
One marker of that engagement: Demczak's colleague Greg Ewens was among the planners who helped craft the original laneway suite policies as part of the EHON task force. More recently, Batori Planning was retained by the City of Toronto itself to provide feedback on mid-rise performance standard updates — giving the firm an inside view of where the next round of reforms is heading.
The As-of-Right Toolkit: What Each Product Actually Allows
Demczak walked through the key parameters for each residential typology currently permitted as of right across Toronto's residential zones — practical numbers that matter at the due diligence stage.
Laneway suites are permitted in most residential zones, with a 6.3-metre maximum height and an 8 by 10-metre maximum footprint. Single-storey units require a 4-metre separation from the main dwelling; two-storey units require 7.5 metres. No side yard setbacks are required, though emergency access — either a 0.9-metre side yard passage or proximity within 90 metres of a fire hydrant via the laneway — must be satisfied. Sprinkler systems can substitute in some cases.
Garden suites carry similar parameters, with a 6-metre height cap and a more restrictive footprint formula: the lesser of 60 square metres, 40% of the rear yard, or 20% of total lot area. Angular planes apply to all sides above 4 metres — a stricter provision than laneway suites — reflecting the city's greater concern about privacy and overlook where buildings back onto adjacent rear yards.
Multiplexes are permitted across almost every residential zone, including detached zones, at heights ranging from 10 to 13 metres with a maximum of three storeys. Four units are permitted as of right citywide; select wards have updated to 6 units. Critically, there are no floor space index limits and no parking requirements — two factors that Demczak flagged as transformative for sites that previously couldn't pencil out.
"You can also build a garden suite or a laneway suite within the rear yard of all properties that permit multiplexes. So in many cases, we're working on projects where it's not just the four units permitted as of right — it could be 5, or in some cases up to 7 units."
Major street apartments and townhomes represent the newest layer of permissions. Any residential property along a designated major street is now permitted up to 6 storeys or 19 metres for apartment typologies, and up to 4 storeys for townhouses — with no density or FSI limits. Up to 60 units are permitted, though anything over 10 units or 2,000 square metres triggers site plan approval. One parking space — typically visitor or accessible — is required.
Major Transit Station Areas: The Density Multiplier
For sites near transit, the permissions become substantially more generous. Toronto's Official Plan now permits apartment buildings of up to 8 storeys as of right within 200 metres of a designated major transit station area on a major street. Within 200 metres of a station more broadly, FSI requirements climb to 8.0; within 500 metres, to 6.0 — numbers that have fundamentally repositioned properties that sat underdesignated for decades.
Demczak pointed to several recent projects to illustrate the scale of what's now achievable: a 46-storey tower at 1151 Weston Road adjacent to Weston GO; a recently approved 33-storey mixed-use building at 3130 Danforth Avenue near Victoria Park subway; and a three-tower site at 2444 Eglinton East delivering 612 co-op housing units and 307 condominiums next to a GO train station in Scarborough.
He also noted that the city's MTSA and PMTSA implementing zoning — which would formalize these permissions into the bylaw — remains incomplete, delayed in part by the fall municipal election. The policy framework is ahead of the zoning, and that gap creates both opportunity and uncertainty for applicants.
As-of-Right Doesn't Mean Frictionless
Sarang's segment brought the policy framework into contact with project reality. DevNext has put more than 60 multiplex units into development in roughly the past year — and that experience has come with a clear lesson: as-of-right approval and a smooth approval process are not the same thing.
"As of right, you have two options. One: just comply with the zoning — don't change anything, not even one centimetre of the setback — and you can get the zoning certificate and go straight to building permit. But if you go for a little more difficult pathway — a variance, a committee of adjustment — then back and forth, back and forth. You should know that multiplex is as of right, but it doesn't mean whatever you are changing, you will get approval."
Sarang flagged that even city planning staff can be inconsistent in their interpretation of which zoning bylaw applies to a given product — multiplex, apartment building, house — adding time and cost to applications that should be straightforward. His recommendation for any landowner or developer entering the space: build the team first.
"Most of the time, even the architect doesn't know exactly these policies. You need a planner, a real estate developer, an architect, and a surveyor as the main components of the team, just to move forward smoothly with an application that has a high chance of approval."
The Citizen Developer Opportunity
The session's most expansive moment came when Sarang reframed who these policies are actually designed to serve. Multiplexes, he argued, have created a fundamentally new category of participant in the housing market — the landowner who doesn't need to be a professional developer to build meaningful density on their own property.
"This is a big, big methodology: the citizen can be a developer. In the past, the opportunity was just to convert to a custom home. Right now, they have the opportunity to build gentle density. If you convert 1,000 lots to five or six units, at the end of the day, citizens can provide 5,000 to 6,000 homes within two years. That is an amazing opportunity."
On the tools side, Sarang pointed to technology platforms now compressing the cost and time of early-stage due diligence — including LandLogic, which can generate a multiplex assessment report and building massing in minutes, and DevNext's own NextFormula, a free financial modelling tool for landowners evaluating project viability before committing to a professional team.
Q&A: Separation Distances, Parking, and the Building Code Gap
The session closed with two sharp Q&A exchanges. The first, from an attendee whose garden suite permit was held up over separation distances, revealed a distinction that catches many applicants: the 7.5-metre zoning bylaw requirement and the Ontario Building Code's separate rules on openings and glazing percentages are two different compliance tracks. Demczak advised engaging the project architect on OBC requirements — and noted that fire shutters or sprinkler systems can sometimes resolve window reduction requirements where glazing can't be reduced.
The second question, on whether to include parking in a sixplex even when it isn't required, drew a practical consensus from both speakers. Where transit access is strong, zero parking may be defensible. Where it isn't — particularly in Etobicoke, Scarborough, and other suburban locations — both Demczak and Sarang recommended providing at least minimal parking, both as a market consideration and as a gesture of good standing with the surrounding neighbourhood.
"As long as you can provide parking, please provide it — unless you have a property within walking distance to a metro station or fast public transit. For the rest, if you have a sixplex, provide two or three spaces at minimum. This is a minimum requirement at the lens of marketing and at the lens of respecting the community."
The closing picture from August's session was of a policy environment that has moved further and faster than most of the market has absorbed — and where the developers, planners, and landowners who understand it with precision are finding real opportunity even as the broader market sits quiet.
For more information:
Saman Davari
Project Manager
Saman.davari@trainex.ca