Reading through the government's proposed changes to Bill 23 right now. Toronto's Green Standards are back in for site plan control. I'll make this a thread about all the other proposed revisions.

- Permitting municipalities to retain site plan control over sustainability provisions, meaning municipalities can keep their green building standards
- Allowing development charge bylaw changes to be retroactive to January 2022, instead of June 2022 - Allowing development charge bylaws to be accessed by developers who are building rental housing and already have building permits
- Scrap the two-year timeout completely, allowing anyone to request an OP or RZ within two years of passing a new OP, ZBL, SP

Looking at the More Homes Built Faster Act (MHBFA).. there is just so much.
I'll likely just have to break it down by topic or something.

A LOT of what is in this beast I've already tweeted about. Go look for it. I'll correct any errors here, and mostly stick to new or notable Rental Housing Replacement: As expected, MHBFA gives authority to the Minister to regulate it, but doesn't set out any provisions on how that will look. That's for a future regulation.

The word on the street is that the Oct 25 MMAH announcement will include:
-No 3rd party appeals to the OLT
-Any existing 3rd party appeals that don't have a date scheduled will be cancelled
-Strong mayor powers to all munis +100k pop -Changes to the Dev Charge Act re MTSAs, purpose built rentals
-DC interest rate 1% cap
-DC by-laws updated ever 10 years (currently 5)
-Parkland dedication changes
-Minimum 3 units permitted per lot province wide (this is the current requirement, so not sure what's new here)

Happy OLT Hearing to Dismiss the Stupid Garden Suites By-law Appeal Day. Typical festivities begin at 10am. You can watch the hearing here, if that's your kink (no judgement).

youtube.com/channel/UCxDAc…

If you were planning on building a garden suite in Toronto you’ll have to wait a little longer. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, like 7 residents associations representing the already comfortably housed have appealed the garden suites bylaw. Now, you might be wondering how that’s possible given that it is a conformity bylaw and is only subject to Minister appeal.

Yeah I fuckin wondering that myself. It should be thrown out of the OLT like Jazzy Jeff from Uncle Phil’s house.

The other good item on the Planning and Housing Committee agenda next week is the Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods: Multiplex Study - Interim Report. This doesn't have policy recommendations or proposed zoning tweaks, but informs how things are going. Proposed changes aren't expected until Q2 2022, so nothing to do on this item now other.
Here's the report.
toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2…
Some highlights from it:

Have some time between calls, so time to look at the PHC agenda for next week. First up, laneway suites. As part of the recommendations, some zoning changes are proposed (so of course I'm going to them first).

I have gotten variances for at around 4 or 5 of these (more than once), so these changes should help keep LS's out of the CoA. A good thing. I support all of these changes.

At the July 13 TO Planning & Housing Committee, the Missing Middle roadmap, of sorts, is being put forward.

app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgen… If approved by P&H and Council, this will kick off work to potentially (but far from assured) increase permissions in the yellowbelt. This is the necessary first step.

I don’t normally tweet about projects I work on, but when it involves a Committee of Adjustment denying a variance to maintain an entirely existing (not legal) triplex containing 3 units of affordable housing bc the new owner wanted the fire department to make sure it was safe... I might have to approve a variance to my policy. But need some time so I’m not angry tweeting.