Backyards are no longer just for storing junk and growing trees. Exemplifying this seemingly absurd ideology, an article by The New York Times entitled “Can’t Afford a House? Just Build One in the Backyard,” written by Michael Kaminer describes how, amid racing housing prices, Toronto residents have resorted to creating homes in their backyard.
Emphasizing how this is a new, financially-viable and comparatively more “independent” manner of housing, the article quotes Joe Mihevc, a 70-year-old Toronto resident who, along with his wife, erected a two-bedroom (1,300 square-foot) cottage in the grassy patch behind his house after the last of their three children moved out. According to the article, the family covered the cost of erecting this cottage with a home equity line of credit. This was about 50,000 Canadian dollars, half of what the family would have paid for a condo in the area. The article also describes how Mr. Mihevc did about 70 percent of the work himself, indicating the simplicity of the process.
Exploring the reason behind this “move to the backyard” or the rising tradition of “garden suites” in Canada’s largest city, the article describes how a drastic inventory shortage and a ballooning population have set home prices skyrocketing. The article labels this as a “common conundrum” and quotes Toronto’s Mayor, Olivia Chow, who acknowledged the present state of the housing market as a dire situation and a disaster. As per the article, Chow recognizes the root cause of this article as something that dates back several decades, when all three levels of the government stopped building houses. “We have to fix that by building more and building faster,” she says in the article.
A major reason behind this housing crisis, and the subsequent last resort to move into the backyard of one’s existing home, also stems from a major underestimation of the population growth. The article acknowledges this, and quotes Paul Calandra, the housing minister for the province of Ontario who describes how they “horrifically underestimated” the population growth, and never imagined that “800,000 people would pour into the province, the vast majority of them into the Greater Toronto area.”
However, “garden suites” did not receive a particularly enthusiastic response.
The New York Times article describes how homeowners in Toronto have been slow to embrace them as a solution. As per the article, a report by Laneway Housing Advisors, a consulting firm in the city, states that only 400 applications were received to build these “backyard annexes” that, according to the article, majorly serve a singular purpose: which is for families to house their elders and cash-strapped children. The Mihevcs, as described in the article, are an example of one such family.
For most people, “backyard annexes” or “garden suites” prove to be a viable housing opportunity. But for others, these backyard residences have also yielded business possibilities. The article describes how Mr. Mihevc, after recognizing the positive impact of this altered residential arrangement in his life, initiated Humewood Homes, a garden suite business that helps clients with design, permitting and construction. In the article, Mr. Mihevc describes how he organized an open house for Humewood in his garden suite—the location where it all started. Attesting to the success of this seemingly full-circle initiative, Mihevc describes how “100 people came through” and “they were getting two or three calls a week from potential customers.”
Thus, garden suites aren’t just housing arrangements. They’re symbols of growth and development, epitomizing the unshakeable nature of the human spirit in the face of rapidly escalating inflation. Encouraging us to switch to simple and patient solutions, garden suites help us revisit the seemingly common adage, that change begins at home, enabling us to reckon with and embrace the truth that it contains.
