Guelph mayor Cam Guthrie is hoping his motion to increase the number of residential units on a single lot will help address the housing crisis in the city.
At a special council meeting on Tuesday, the motion was unanimously approved to have staff draft a zoning bylaw amendment that will allow up to four residential units (or fourplexes) per lot as-of-right.
Guthrie first introduced the motion back in May and said, at the time, it originally didn’t have a set limit of the number of units allowed per lot.
“I actually brought a motion forward to consider more than three,” Guthrie said. “It didn’t limit it four. It could have been five, six, seven, or eight.”
He said a motion to raise the limit to more than four will be brought up sometime in the next several months. In the meantime, the draft bylaw will be brought forward in 2024.
Guelph joins the City of Kitchener in considering allowing fourplexes in that municipality. Kitchener’s motion was approved on Monday and its draft bylaw will be put up for a vote sometime in 2024.
Other municipalities in Ontario, however, have rejected the idea of allowing fourplexes. Mississauga recently defeated a motion to allow fourplexes near transit stops.
Guthrie said allowing fourplexes in growing cities should be a no-brainer.
“What we are seeing now even since May to today, the housing crisis has gotten even worse,” Guthrie said. “Because of the housing crisis, I think we have pull out all options and all tools to make sure we are looking at as much as we can do to help.”
The special Council meeting was a workshop on housing in Guelph. It covered a number of actions and responses to the issue including the City to consider housing as a human right, using the federal Housing Accelerator Fund as an incentive to build new residential units, and more.
— with files from Global News’ Uday Rana
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