The Ben Mulroney Show - Building up housing density in Toronto... at the expense of elbow room!

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

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That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what-if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.cair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. talk about 63 Station Road, Toronto. And this is a story that we touched upon on Friday while I was away, but it needs to be revisited today. Let's talk about your house. Talk about your house, my house, intrepid's house, anybody's house.

If you own a house, it is because, well, there's a number of reasons, but all in all, it is the most important investment that you will make. And you may love your house. you may hate your house, you may, maybe your dream house, maybe your stepping stone house, but it is the most important investment you can make. You take care of your house, and then when you need her to, she'll take care of you. That's the bargain you strike with your house. And I've had that myself, and I know what that means, and I know how important it is,

how good it feels, have something that you own. Yes, I admit, you've got to pay the bank, but you own it. And so I want you to imagine, I don't have to imagine. This is the reality that in in 2020, Toronto ended single-of-family-only zoning. Which means all of a sudden, if somebody wants to build an apartment building next door, a duplex, a triplex, a quad,

four-plexes, they can do that. And they did that at 63 Station Road. You can do that on every residential lot in the city. And I want you to imagine that you've got, got this beautiful, beautiful house that you've been paying for and you've been paying into. And you wake up one day and you look out your back, you look at your back window at your backyard. What you used to see to your left and to your right were the backyards of other people.

Well, now you wake up and what do you see? You see a wall, a wall lining your entire, the entire length of your backyard. Because the developer who got the authorization to do this. this to build up density because we need that in the downtown core we need to make homes more affordable we need to be able to have people to rent and buy downtown they've put four how is it four four four units on a lot that used to have just one and when you when you remember that they changed the rules because we apparently in ontario need 285,000 new homes by 2031 this is the fastest way to do it, right? Why build single, single occupancy homes when you could, for the same

cost, put four families under the same roof? Right? Why not? Yeah, absolutely. And this house as well, this fourplex, the builders put it together, but then after the fact said, you know what, we really want to make this into eight. Yeah. So they went back to the committee of adjustment with the city and said, and had a hearing. And the city said, yep, I mean, they're not changing the footprint. No. They're changing the density within the. That building. Those four units are going to now become eight. Eight.

Yeah. So the residents there are, you know, they're not that thrilled. I mean, in a typical situation, and you have to see these pictures. These pictures are so jarring. That's, it's like, you know, one of these things is not like the other.

That, yeah, it's really clear to see what is not like the other here. And before you come on me, before you come at me as being a nimby, I want this to happen all over the city, just not in my neighborhood. Just look at what they've built and put yourself in the shoes of the person next door and ask yourself,

like, what would you do if you saw this and you knew that the value of your home was going to take a hit? What's the best way you would describe it when you see the pictures? Because think about three plots next to each other and the middle plot has this.

Has this new build in it. It looks like to me, like Tetris, and you've taken the one long piece of Tetris and dropped it in. That's exactly right. And it's three and a half stories tall. Yeah. So along the entire property line

of the two houses on either side, you've got this giant wall. Yeah, it's terrible. With windows. Okay. But so then I find myself, Droulet, I find myself saying, Okay, well, I put myself in the homeowners' shoes,

because we're all homeowners. But then for a second, I've got to put myself in the shoes of the homeowner who sold to the developer. Because what did I say at the top of this? Take care of your home, and your home will take care of you. Well, in that moment, that's the home taking care of you, where a guy says, hey, I want to buy this from you. Probably won't, I don't care about what state it's in, right?

Because I'm going to get rid of it. So, and I'm going to give you more money than it's probably worth. Hard to turn that down. If you were in that guy's shoes, would you turn that down? Probably not. Well, he was selling. I mean, he's selling to somebody who decided to do something different with the home than he was using it as. And it's up to them if they want to do renovations or anything.

But in this case, they decided to knock it down and not knock it down to build another single family home, but to be able to put four in. Yeah, which eventually maybe hopefully eight. So you wonder how it got made, right? Well, you don't need a building permit or a site plan approval anymore. No, all you need, you do not need rezoning, variances, neighborhood approval, or public meetings. So all those things that we would tell people like, hey, why didn't you go do these things? Why didn't you go to the rezoning meetings?

Why didn't you have your voice heard? Because none of that matters anymore. No. None of that matters. Neighbors cannot stop it. They cannot appeal it. They cannot trigger a public hearing. They cannot force a voice, a vote on counsel.

They can't do anything. If a developer wants to put that long Tetris piece all the way down the length of your property line, three stories high, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. And so we asked a planning consultant for developers. It was the developer. Of this developer, of this developer, is density like this inevitable?

That's a fair assessment. And in fact, this broader neighborhood is filled with multiplexes and low-rise apartment buildings. And over time, we're seeing more and more of them. It's also an area that's situated in close proximity to mimic a go-go station in an area that the city defines as a major transit station area where it is actively looking to target low-rise intensification and development. So that's the key, right? If you're close to transit. So if you have in, are in a neighborhood, anywhere close to one of these go train stations,

open your eyes and pay attention to see if any of the homes around you are for sale and what's going to, and try to figure out what's going to happen with them. So that was Blair Scor. So we asked all as well, if you live there, would you sell? If it were me, I would probably redevelop the property of my own into a multiplex. But if I was anyone else, I might consider that. Yeah, but I think in the process of doing so, I would consider the value of the land in the context of what that uplift, you know,

affords in terms of that additional density. And that that should be considered in the value proposition of anyone seeking to, seeking to buy that property. So Intrepid reached out to a real estate agent before the show. He found out that the immediate neighbors lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in value and others nearby. possibly. So after the break, we are going to be speaking with the next door neighbor. The neighbor next door to that long Tetris piece that was dropped down the length of the

property, three stories high. We're going to find out how it happened when she realized something was going wrong. And did she feel powerless to stop it? This could be you next. But don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulroney show. Well, before the break, we're telling you about sort of what this thing looks like, what this new fourplex looks like that looks like it's the best imagery possible like a 3D version of a giant

Tetris piece, the long one that gets deposited at all the length of a property. So when you look out at your property on the left, that's what you see. Well, we are joined now by the person who does, in fact, look out on her left. The next door neighbor to 63 station road.

Please welcome to the show, Christine Calland Tramble. Christine, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. Hi. Thanks for having me. So talk to, give us a sense of the timeline here. At what point were you made aware of how big of a footprint this thing was going to have? At what point did you notice it? And how has it affected your life so far? Well, about two years ago is when they had put in the application for this and started building this. And at that point, we didn't have a say about anything. We just got a letter saying that this was happening under the new multiplex laws. They were allowed to build this. And we're fine with a

forplex. It's not a problem. We have them in the area. But when we saw the drawings of this, we were like, what? This is going to be for four apartments? It didn't seem that way. Correct me, if I'm wrong, across the street, there's an apartment building, an older one. There is. It's an older one. It's on a double lot, though.

And there's an interesting story with that one. That one was non-compliant back in the day as well. It's kind of history repeating itself. But our units, like our side of the street is all residential, single family homes. And they're 30 by, they're long, they're 30 by about 190. But so the other side has like a double lot.

They have like 60 and they have the appropriate parking all around it, whereas this one will not. So basically they've come in, they apply for the four units, but they built for eight. And you can see that that's what they did because if it was a four unit, that would be 3,000 square feet per floor. But we didn't really have anything that we could do about it because of the new laws until they applied for that eight unit apartment building. And that's when we all went, aha, this was planned all along. He even said so to one of our neighbors.

This is how you do it, he said. Yeah, you ask you apply for forgiveness. Exactly. So they're doing that. And like we're worried. I mean, of course, like the whole thing is not functional. The 10 variances that they want to, the bylaws that they want to break. are things that are there for safety and functionality.

Like there's no parking. We're already a very busy street, very narrow. There's a library and a park nearby. Like this is going to become very congested with no parking for eight units. They had no garbage and no bike storage. Yeah, they put something in. So we went to the hearing and we actually were able to like tell a whole bunch of people in the neighborhood. And we ended up getting 139 letters.

of objection. And that's big because that's like not just the neighbors being upset. That's the whole community thing. This is not going to work. Your city counselor put out a letter as well saying that this thing does not fit with the, even though she voted for this in the first place. But what you're

saying is you don't have a problem with a fourplex necessarily, but that was never, these people were bad faith actors and they were always intending on putting in an eightplex. Yeah, a fourplex is one thing. I mean, but to put to eight unit and ask now for these 10 bylaws to be ignored.

Like that's irresponsible development. We don't want irresponsible development. We're going to end up being overdeveloped as a city. And so if these guys are allowed to do this and they have a couple other buildings in the neighborhood, they're going to be doing the exact same thing. If they're allowed to do this, like we're going to see this all over Toronto. It's going to set a precedent, a dangerous precedent for everyone around. Well, paint a picture for us.

When you are drinking your coffee, looking out onto your backyard in the morning, what do you see now? What do you see now? Yeah, I see a giant, it looks like at the meeting that they held, someone called it like an Amazon warehouse. And that's kind of what it looks like. And you described it really right. It's like a child, you know, decided to put a Tetris piece in, oh, it fits this way and like the entrance of the building is at my back deck. So, you know, having a fourplex is one thing where you're going to have that many families moving in and like that much density. But Aplex, that doubles the amount of eyes on my property. There's 10 windows on my side.

The entrance to the building is right at my back deck and can look into my house. My daughter's bedroom, there's a window like a stones throw away that looks right into her room. Yeah, it's terrible. And one of the variances that they're asking for is to have zero soft landscaping between the bills between both properties. And so there's no absorb, like this thing's going to shed water around it and there's no absorption of water.

It's going to go right to my house. Like Wimico's known for like we are basement's flood all the time. And like it's their property is a little bit higher than mine in the backyard. So my garden's on a slope on that side. So all the water is going to pour down into my to my. So basically they've built this thing too big. Yeah. They've built it too big.

If they wanted an apartment building, they should have allowed for the proper space around it. Of course. Yeah. Make it way more functional. So what do you think, what do you think your options are here? What do you mean? Well, like, are there, now that you said, you know, they built it for eight.

Yeah. That's what the assumption is. They built it for eight. They said four, now they're coming back. Now they have it built, they're going to say, oh, can we, can we expand it to eight? So, you know, they're demonstrating back. We're hoping. Yeah.

We're hoping to keep it to four is what we're hoping. So you're not even looking to get this thing torn down? Oh, I would love to, but I don't think, I don't know that that's going to actually happen. I would love for them to say, because I feel like that would really set a precedent to all the developers, is that, you know what, take half of it down. You can build it this big. You know, your intention was always, as we can see, that it was for eight units, and that's not what you put in for.

So I feel like that would be the best case scenario that they asked them to take part of it down or adjust the sizing and whatnot. But if that's not possible, because I think that's not an easy thing to have happen at this point, which is what they're hoping for, right? Then a fourplex, like keep it a fourplex families, you know, in the neighborhood. That would be better and it would be more functional. It would, in terms of like parking on the street and just less density, less garbage.

But yeah, no, take half of it down. Christine, what happens if you find out in a few and a year or so that your next door neighbor on the right has sold? And something like this is going to go in. I don't know. I guess I'm getting boxed in. You're talking about both sides now? I think I'm selling with them and it gets developed. I mean, maybe that's what they're hoping for.

But, like, as it is, like, this is a very, like, on our start of the street anyways, it's all single family homes. and this is kind of like destroying our enjoyment of the home, you know? When are they scheduled to move in? When is it going to be moving ready? Oh, I have no idea. They have another apartment building or kind of complex. I don't know how many units that one is on Cavell. That's been up for seven years.

No one's in it yet. And there's some kind of issue that they're facing that they can't go further with it. Have you heard anything from them about the window on the side that faces your daughter's room? Are they going to frost that for you? So they mentioned that that could be a possibility at the meeting. So when they, I think we got them a little scared when we went to the hearing and in under two weeks got that many letters of opposition including the counselors. And a bunch of people showed up to speak. So they deferred.

And we were hoping not to defer and like just go through with this because why not, right? What else are we going to be able to say? So they wanted a meeting. They had the meeting. and, you know, the developer wasn't even at the meeting, which is an interesting thing. So it was all that we were like, why not? Why can't we know who the developer is? We think we know who the developer is, but it keeps saying for their privacy.

I'm like, for their privacy. They've taken away your privacy. Yeah. You can't. Your daughter wasn't even there. People staring in your daughter's room, talk about privacy. Yeah. So they had this meeting and, you know, they made some, some, I wouldn't call them

promises. They just made some suggestions that they will bring to the developer with the idea of frosted windows. And I said, this is great that you're talking about these things, but regardless of if it's a four or an eight, like, I still don't want an eight. I still, like, it's still too many people. You haven't given, like, people have an invisible footprint, you know, it's not just the space. They've just built it too big. They actually asked me, I have a text from them, to put a leg of the scaffolding on our side of the property so they could build our side. They haven't built it yet. I don't know how they're going to actually build it because they've built it so close to our edge. So what are you going to do? And I said no. I said no because I said, you know what,

the developers should have thought about this ahead of time and not built it so big. Think about how they're going to be able to build it on their own property. Hey, Christine. It's like bad planning from the beginning and everything has been steps backwards. Yeah. To me, I feel like it feels really unsafe. Actually, just recently they were told by May 14th that they have to take down all the styrofoam they put up because it's not to fire code. And I just feel like what other things are

happening? They're continuing to build for eight inside of this. We're calling the inspectors. The inspectors are around a lot more. They've had some orders to comply. I just feel like all of this seems very unsafe and shady. And it's, I feel like, yeah, they need to put a stop to it.

If I could get you to give me advice for other neighborhoods they're going to be going through this. And if you give it to me about 30 seconds. Well, this is exactly it. We want this to be, it's too late for us in some ways. It might still be the size. So my advice is as soon as

you see this happening, people putting in fourplexes, be wary. Look at the plan. See what you can do to fight against it before it gets built like ours. Christine Callent Trumbly. Yeah. It's Christine Callant Trebley. Thank you so much.

And I'm sorry this is happening, but it feels like if anyone's going to pick up the torch and do something positive with it, it's going to be you. Thanks. All right. com. That's onethamav.com and discover the opulence you deserve.