We didn’t yet know how many children we were going to have when we bought our house 13 years ago. Finally, we put them two by two in their room. The other small room welcomes my mother once a week, from Wednesday to Thursday. She lives far from the city, and when she comes to help us, she sleeps there.
Except that this year, my daughter saw hair growing under her arms. She wants her room. So we’re going to do a little rearrangement: she’s going to take our room, so the oldest of our boys will also have his own room – he’s a hair away from starting puberty. The two youngest are still young enough to share a room for a few years. My partner and I are going to take the small room where my mother sleeps.
In the metro area, there are more than half a million single-family homes like ours. Houses with their beautiful courtyards: billions of square feet… empty. And downright underutilized.
Billions of empty square feet, while year after year we talk about a housing crisis. While young people can no longer access property. Hell, they struggle to get access to simple broccoli at the supermarket.
Billions of empty square feet while, to curb urban sprawl, we are looking for ways to densify our cities and thus optimize public transportation and active modes of transportation — and reduce our footprint accordingly.
Billions of empty square feet while private residences for seniors, the famous RPAs, close one after the other (more than 500 in five years). And nothing prevents those who remain open from asking for an annual price equivalent to a lifetime’s savings. Billions of square feet wasted while, ultimately, everything is very far from going well.
However, a solution, at least partial, exists.
For two years now, the City of Toronto has offered the possibility of building a garden pavilion or a small house in backyards. I remember, upon reading this news, writing immediately to my district mayor. It turns out that she sits in an opposition party, and her scope of action is sometimes limited, so I thought I would write this letter and directly challenge the mayor of the central city.
Madam Mayor Valérie Plante, I will soon be reorganizing my house and, soon, there will be no more room to accommodate my mother. I will see her less often, and she will see her grandchildren less often. Above all, we will lose his precious help. And her grandmother’s hugs.
I want to build a pavilion in my backyard.
In exchange, you could not only receive sums when a permit authorizing it is issued, but this project would also increase the value of our property, and therefore the taxes collected: doubling more money in the coffers of the City. In the long term, it may also be one less person in an RPA. Elsewhere, it is the adult child of a neighbor who lives in his house, and therefore one more apartment on the rental market: a small balm on the crisis.
Time flies. In 20 or 30 years, I will be more than tired of cutting the grass, oiling the exterior moldings and clearing the entrance. I hope, at this point, that one of my children will be willing to take over the household. On the condition that he endures me in the little garden pavilion: I don’t want to end my old days spending my savings in an RPA either.
Not a perfect solution, then, but a solution that strangely “checks” a lot of boxes, in addition to helping the young and the old, two segments of the population who are struggling otherwise.
As for me, I just hope I can continue to receive my mother on Wednesdays other than on a sofa bed in the middle of the living room. My old lady has enough back pain as it is.