The push continues to solve Toronto’s housing crisis and the latest big push is to build in small places.Now, with just the click of a button, the City of Toronto says homeowners can access free, pre-approved construction plans to build garden and laneway dwellings on their properties. These detached secondary homes are separate housing units located on the property of a primary residence, either in the backyard or next to a public laneway.“No need to hire an architect or a planner because these drawings and plans already comply with the Ontario building code,” said Mayor Olivia Chow. “These plans can help homeowners save time and money. The city also can demonstrate how building more units and expanding a single-family home helps build a community and helps fix the housing crisis.”It’s just one of three new initiatives announced by the city which also includes expanding online building permit applications for new units and an expansion of its Professional Engineer Seal program. Starting July 14, building plans stamped by licensed professional engineers will be considered pre-approved, allowing the city to review new construction projects faster.“We can spend a lot of time changing this zoning and that bylaw and whatever it might be, sure it’ll help a little bit but are people building, no, there are 330,000 units of housing already approved in the pipeline. It’s stuck, so we have to make it cheaper to build housing and that is what we’re doing here.”Stephanie Bertolo, a local pro-housing advocate, says when taking into consideration just how many properties can accommodate development and the number of people that want to build, it’s pretty limited.“I think this is a necessary policy change to allow these units to be built, but in terms of building enough housing in the city to accommodate everyone who wants to live here at affordable prices, it’s just a small drop in the bucket.”In fact, according to Mayor Chow, garden suites have been approved in the city since 2022 but only 114 have been constructed so far which raises questions about efficiency, pointing back to last week’s sixplexes debate, where council voted to allow the multi-unit housing in only nine wards as opposed to city-wide, leaving the other 16 to have to opt in, ultimately, impacting the city’s ability to access federal housing funding.“I don’t believe a top-down way of doing things will mean that people are going to rush out and build housing. It hasn’t worked. This is practical. make it simpler, cheaper, faster for people to build,” said Chow.