Don’t let the mushrooming condos downtown fool you. There is no housing shortage in Toronto, says new planning research out of Ryerson University.

The draft report, called “Protecting the Vibrancy of Residential Neighbourhoods,” shows that Toronto is over-housed, with a majority of 140 city neighbourhoods suffering from a stagnant or declining population over the last 30 years — along with most residentially zoned land restricted to single-family detached homes.

The report comes from recent urban planning grad Cheryll Case, along with Tetyana Bailey. When they matched the city’s zoning boundaries with recent Census information, the researchers found that 30 neighbourhoods actually declined in population and another 65 were essentially frozen, gaining less than one person per kilometre despite the city’s 7.6 per cent population growth between 2001 and 2016.

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While some areas of the city — notably downtown — have boomed, others such as Etobicoke and York are dwindling, as the average household size in Toronto shrunk from 5.22 people in 1986 to 3.85 in 2001.

“It’s concerning because demographically we’re changing as a city,” said Case, 22.

“People are having fewer kids. It’s important to have development to reflect the needs and demands of the population today. Downtown you have a range of housing choices. You don’t get those choices in the inner suburbs

“All the condos that are built are mostly one- and two-bedrooms and that doesn’t really accommodate for families,” she said.

Case lives in a detached home near Kipling Ave. and Dixon Rd. in Etobicoke, where she grew up.

“We’re surrounded by seniors. They’re either widowed or the kids have moved out. These are detached bungalows . . . Two families could live in these houses essentially,” she said.

The report also points out that a lot of single-family detached homes in Toronto have been levelled and rebuilt — most of the time the new structures are actually bigger than the houses they replace.

In 68 of the 140 neighbourhoods, houses that were rebuilt were taller than the preceding homes. Twenty-seven neighbourhoods featured replacement housing that was smaller and 45 neighbourhoods retained the original homes.

The report found household sizes don’t vary much between detached homes and other types of housing such as apartments, townhouses or duplexes, so some people are living with far more space than other families.

Meantime schools in the inner suburbs are declining in enrolment and seniors can’t age in their own neighbourhoods because they don’t have downsizing options close to home, Case said.

That’s a result of long-standing zoning introduced during the sprawl years before government recognized the value of denser development, said Case’s mentor Sean Galbraith, who runs a private planning business.

Most of the city has the highly restrictive zoning around residential detached housing, so you can’t build other kinds of homes in those areas, he said.

Case’s study supports the need for policies that would unlock the restrictions on building other housing such as townhomes, apartments and triplexes in suburban neighbourhoods.

“If you wanted to do the gentlest form of density there is — taking one unit and making it into two — you basically can’t. Zoning and the Official Plan restricts you from being able to do that in just under 40 per cent of the land mass of the city or 62 per cent of the residential areas,” he said.

Galbraith says the capacity for neighbourhood change is concentrated in a few older areas of the city such as Parkdale or the Annex, where there are long-standing histories of multi-family housing.

“The majority of the residential areas are overprotected from change. And that puts change pressure on parts of the city that are under-protected from change,” he said.

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But Galbraith doesn’t blame city planners for Toronto’s difficult retreat from the postwar sprawl era. He says the city’s planning department is “chronically under-resourced.”

Planners have to pick their battles so the city is focused on avenues such as Eglinton, where new transit is being built along with more midrise housing, said Galbraith.

“That’s great but it only solves part of the problem (in those neighbourhoods),” he said. “If you don’t want to live in a midrise building, you don’t have any options, you’re now in the house market.

“Essentially everybody in the housing market is stuck where they are. Everybody who is fortunate enough to have a house, instead of moving on to a different unit that is better suited to their needs, they’re just renovating an existing house,” Galbraith said.

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