The Hub’s second annual Hunter Prize for Public Policy, generously supported by the Hunter Family Foundation, focused on solving Canada’s housing affordability crisis. A diverse group of ten finalists have been chosen from nearly 300 entries, with the finalists and winners chosen by an esteemed panel of judges, including Amanda Lang, Ben Rabidoux, and Mike Moffatt. The Hub is pleased to run essays from each finalist this week that lay out their plans to help solve this persistent policy problem.
Committees of adjustment (COA) are a nebulous part of the planning process in Ontario. Appointed by municipal councils, these quasi-judicial bodies generally make rulings on two planning areas: granting land severance/lot boundary changes and approving minor variances from zoning by-laws. For most people, what comes to mind when you mention a COA are stories of neighbours fighting the positioning of a fence, deck, shed, or pool that is just “too close” to the property line.
Governments of all levels have attempted to smooth out zoning processes to encourage more housing: a tiny home going into a backyard for an elderly relative, a basement being converted into an apartment for a child who can’t afford to move out and needs external egress in the side yard, or maybe a developer trying to maximize space on a vacant lot near a post-secondary institution by attempting to build a fourplex in a neighbourhood that was traditionally single-family homes. Based on conversations with municipal planning officials, these cases are becoming more and more common, and most of them must go through some form of a minor variance process.
The commendable community members who serve on a COA face a daunting challenge. In Guelph, Ont., in 2023, for example, the total consolidated agenda length exceeded 5,700 pages for the year. These COA appointees generally do not receive significant compensation nor are they required to have specific expertise in planning or legal issues, and yet they are expected to interpret a set of four subjective tests in a consistent manner in the face of potential community opposition. These tests are:
- The variance requested must meet the general intent and purpose of the Official Plan;
- The variance requested must meet the general intent and purpose of the zoning by-law;
- The variance requested must be desirable for the appropriate development of the applicable lands, building or structure; and
- The variance requested must be minor in nature.
It is suspected that the type of developer impacted most by the COA are smaller developers looking to do infill development in existing neighbourhoods. This is where zoning by-laws tend to be most constraining on the built form of new construction but where it is also the most environmentally and economically sustainable location for housing.
In most large communities in Ontario, as part of the COA process, a pre-assessment by municipal staff of a proposal is required. Often, this step acts as a gatekeeping step, steering away projects that are not likely to be supported by the COA. The result of this step is shown in a recent scan of 11 Ontario municipalities all with populations over 100,000 people, based on 4,600 COA decisions that were made, only 3.8 percent (178) of applications were rejected.
The fact that over 96 percent of applications are being approved is a good thing, but we must ask, is this the right process to approve minor variances? By involving COAs in all minor variance applications, we are putting the fate of a housing project on an unaccountable panel of community members who are underpaid and overworked and expecting them to interpret a set of subjective tests in a consistent manner in the face of potential NIMBY opposition. The applicant must pay thousands of dollars in fees to the municipality, wait at least 30 days (most likely longer) for a hearing, and internalize the additional cost for the creation of their application and supporting materials.
The solution to this challenge is to take some of the subjectivity out of the COA process and enable the expert planner who is doing the pre-assessment to approve truly minor variances to get housing built. If the variance is within a certain margin of the zoning by-law requirement, it could be automatically approved by staff.
For example, a back-of-lot setback for a duplex in Windsor, Ont., requires a minimum of 7.5 metres (approximately 25 feet)—a province-wide variance approval for any value exceeding the minimum by 10 percent would allow a new approvable minimum of 6.75 metres (approximately 22 feet), creating a bit more space on the lot for a potential third unit without needing COA approval.
In Barrie, Ont., additional dwelling units (ADUs) are allowed by right in residential zoning, but in some R-zones, ADUs are required to be a minimum of three metres (approximately 10 feet) from the back and each side of the lot. Narrowing the buildable area off each side of each property makes it challenging to build these “as of right structures” without needing a variance—reducing that value by one-third would create an extra two metres (approximately six feet) of as of right buildable area between both sizes of the lot. This could turn thousands of lots into areas where “as of right” without a variance.
This sort of change would require provincial intervention and changes to the Planning Act. Certainly, more dramatic and transformative steps could be taken, but the political risks of those steps are much larger as they would require the stripping of municipal powers over site-specific zoning and land use nearly entirely. The willingness of governments to take those steps seems to be few and far between.
This proposed solution targets a specific pain point in the subjective and bureaucratic process of creating housing. By automatically approving definitively “minor” variances at an administrative step prior to the COA, we can cut red tape, speed up approval, reduce costs, free up municipal capacity, and get more housing built!