A city report identified an east-end multiplex as exceeding a new limit on bedrooms, but an adviser to the owner disputes the claim.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Toronto has capped the number of bedrooms allowed in a multiplex building, despite criticism that the new planning rules are supported by little evidence.
On June 25, Toronto city council voted to modify its planning bylaws to allow multiplex buildings with five or six units in parts of downtown and one ward in Scarborough, while stopping short of allowing them in the whole city.
The updated bylaw also established a new formula for the number of bedrooms allowed in any plex application: a duplex can have a maximum of eight bedrooms (or a multiple of four per unit); while all other sizes of – from triplex to sixplex – can only have a maximum of three times the number of units in a building. That means a triplex can have a maximum of nine bedrooms, 12 in a fourplex, 15 in a fiveplex and 18 in a sixplex.
Toronto wrangles with a simple question: What is a multiplex?
“This is a solution looking for a problem,” said Sean Galbraith, a professional planner and president of Sean Galbraith & Associates Urban Planning Services, who struggled to recall any multiplex examples that would be impacted by the city’s bedroom cap. “I work on a lot of multiplexes and a grand total of zero have been that big with bedrooms that exceed that cap. This is an incredibly small market: most properties are not physically big enough to accommodate that many bedrooms.”
Councillor Shelley Carroll was a key proponent of the bedroom cap during the city hall debate, saying on the council floor that a 2023 citywide rollout of fourplexes “had not gone well.” She cited an application in her ward where she asserted a builder had attempted to build “30 bedrooms on one single family dwelling lot.”
When contacted by The Globe, Ms. Carroll’s office declined to provide further details on this proposed multiplex. Tom Gleason, the councillor’s chief of staff, said in an e-mailed statement: “We won’t be naming the specific address, as significant improvements have since been made through the recent policy amendments.
“Councillor Carroll shared the example to help illustrate why it was so important to take the time needed to properly observe the impacts of the multiplex zoning rollout. What we’ve seen is that stronger definitions and new rules – such as a cap on the total number of bedrooms – are now in place to prevent these kinds of extreme cases from slipping through.”
A Toronto multiplex that tests the limits of urban density
Ahead of the vote, the city’s planning department prepared a study of 222 multiplex applications received between 2023 and late 2024. Of those, five – or 2.25 per cent – would have exceeded the new formula. Notably, the largest bedroom count was 16 in a single fourplex. The report recommended the bedroom cap based on these results.
According to a statement from the City Manager’s office, these five projects were flagged because they had “an unusually high number of bedrooms and washrooms, with floor plans that resembled multi-tenant houses, which are regulated by a separate zoning and licensing bylaw.” In a follow-up email, the city one of the five multiplexes had been added to its list in error.
Multi-tenant houses are more commonly known as rooming or lodging houses and are defined as any home with four or more bedrooms separately rented (or rented by individuals who do not form a single household). They were banned in most of Toronto until a series of deaths from fires at unsafe and unlicensed rooming houses led the city to pass a new bylaw in 2024 to legalize them, in an effort to enforce better conditions.
Mr. Galbraith questioned the logic of bedroom limits as a way to tackle rooming houses, given the existing bylaw regime.
“If you have a garbage McMansion with a whole lot of bedrooms we don’t regulate those, but we do regulate rooming houses? If it’s a rooming house, cool, regulate it as such,” he said.
The Globe contacted parties behind four of those five projects the city identified as having “displayed some characteristics of a multi-tenant house.” Of those, only one agreed that its project could have been offside with the city’s new cap.
Construction continues in one of the kitchens of a 12-bedroom fourplex in Toronto’s east end.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Cedric Huzhiguo, president of Polyprime Inc., is building a fourplex in Toronto’s upscale Willowdale neighbourhood with four bedrooms per unit (One more per unit than the city’s new cap allows). He noted that at about 1,900 square feet each his units are larger than many of the single-family bungalows found across the city.
“The city is trying to flag larger units like these as ‘rooming house risks.’ Families and modern households increasingly need more than three bedrooms – especially when remote work is part of everyday life,” said Mr. Huzhiguo, who said home offices are frequently requested by tenants. “Penalizing units for simply offering that space works against the goal of creating functional, inclusive housing,” he said.
The real problem is not extra bedrooms but NIMBY politics that seek to fearmonger against renters, according to Brandon Sage, a realtor and real estate investment adviser at LandLord Property & Rental Management Inc.
“God forbid we have more family housing,” Mr. Sage said. “Who are they placating with that? Just some neighbour who doesn’t want one more car on the street?”
Another of the five projects identified by the city – at 1344 Pape Ave. – is owned by a client of Mr. Sage’s company, and he offered a tour of the nearly completed fourplex to show that even though it was approved before the bedroom cap, it would still comply at just three-bedrooms per unit. He has no idea how the Pape multiplex could have been confused with a potential rooming house.
The city said that 1344 Pape had initially applied for a permit as a duplex with 12 bedrooms, or six bedrooms per unit, before changing to a fourplex that would not violate the new cap.
The small neighbouring home’s property on Pape Ave. is also slated for a multiplex redevelopment.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Mr. Sage’s company manages about 2,400 apartments and homes for property investors across the GTA and argued that the units in the Pape fourplex – with almost 1,500 square feet of space and bedrooms on separate floors from living spaces – is an improvement on other “family size” options in newly built condos, which can be as small as 700 to 800 square feet for two- or three-bedroom apartments.
“Condo units don’t need to be a decent size: they often have no room for a kitchen island or TV area,” said Mr. Sage. “They are the most unrentable units, I can’t find a tenant for them – but [the city] lets that happen.”