With the federal government going on a concentrated housing push before this year’s budget, it’s facing push-back from provinces over a proposal to tie access to new funds to approval for fourplexes — residential buildings with four distinct housing units in them.
The federal government wants to push provinces to enact provincewide zoning changes that would allow people to build fourplexes rather than needing those projects to be individually approved. Some provinces are not happy about it.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, one of the sharpest critics of the federal government’s push for densification, said there would be “shouting and screaming” if these changes went through.
“We are not going to go into communities and build four-storey or six-storey buildings beside residents,” he said.
But is that what a fourplex actually is?
What is a fourplex?
Carolyn Whitzman, housing policy expert and author of Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis, said concerns around changing neighbourhood character can often stymie meaningful progress on housing.
“It’s a very slippery concept that people haven’t defined,” she said of the term.
Whitzman said Ford’s description of fourplexes as “towers” was misleading.
“Most of the fourplex designs that I’ve seen are two storeys. So what they’re doing is taking a large single-family lot and turning it into a semi-detached, duplex-type structure,” she said.
She said building fourplexes is a way to build up “gentle density” – intensifying housing without building either single-family homes or very tall condo towers. She said many experts talk about “having a dwelling in the laneway as gentle density or having a duplex or triplex of gentle density.”
The federal government’s approach so far has been to work directly with individual municipalities to encourage them to enact zoning changes. Some municipalities saw heated debates over these changes, with many mayors vying for a federal Housing Accelerator Fund deal. One such mayor was Mississauga’s Bonnie Crombie, who will be running for premier of Ontario and is the leader of the provincial Liberals.
In October 2023, Crombie used the so-called “strong mayor powers” granted by the province to overrule council and allow fourplexes to be built in the city.
Kelly Singh, a housing advocate in Mississauga, said the city saw NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) push-back.
“Folks who are strongly entrenched in NIMBY attitudes will ‘scream and shout’ if you build a birdhouse. What we’re talking about here is building something that the community desperately needs in a way that maintains the character,” she told Global News.
She said many of the people she grew up with in her community have been priced out amid Mississauga’s rising home prices.
“(There is a) myth that a fourplex is going to destroy character. A lot of the people who can’t live on your street or in your neighborhood, who want to, are so often the people who already lived there, or who used to live there and have been forced out,” Singh said.
Whitzman said similar demographic changes are taking place across single-family neighbourhoods.
“The majority of zoned, single-family residential parts of Toronto and Vancouver have lost population in the last 20 or 30 years. That’s not a good thing. It’s not a good thing for local shops. It’s not a good thing for local schools. It’s not a good thing for infrastructure,” she said.
Singh said allowing fourplexes to be built is good for current homeowners too.
“That is going to give homeowners quite a lot of autonomy to decide whether they would like to turn their own properties into a fourplex. This is not a government program where houses are going to be bulldozed for the government to force a fourplex, and this is allowing homeowners the freedom to decide what they want to do with their own properties,” she said.
Whitzman said fourplexes also offer greater choice to older homeowners looking to downsize.
“Whenever I talk to people like me who are white, older homeowners, we’re worried about where we’re going to live in 20 years. We’re worried, those of us who have children, about where our children are going to live,” she added.
Singh said a fourplex is the solution that her family needs.
“I am thinking about my father who’s a senior. I want to keep him close. I would rather have a housing situation where I can look after him and still give him the dignity and privacy that he deserves, and that is what a fourplex would allow,” she said.
Ottawa vs. the provinces
While some provinces, like British Columbia, have embraced fourplex housing, others remain resistant.
Advocates say it is time for provinces to act.
“The onus is now on provincial and municipal governments to unlock federal infrastructure funding by legalizing the housing forms we desperately need,” said Edmonton-based advocate Yash Bhandari of More Homes Canada.
“Canada has some of the longest approval times in the world. Standardized designs improve construction speed and costs, but making municipal approvals as-of-right is vital to addressing the housing shortage quickly,” Russil Wvong of Abundant Housing Vancouver said.
Whitzman said the decision-making needs to be kicked up the ladder, from municipalities to provinces.
“If we wait for 700-plus municipalities with 5,000-plus people to go through their own consultants’ reports, public consultation … we’ll never get anywhere.”