In early-June, the City of Mississauga announced it would be providing free garden suite design plans for residents looking to add additional living space on their properties separate from their primary dwellings. The idea is to minimize the cost of construction by eliminating the need to hire a designer, providing incentive to help achieve the City’s goals of increasing housing supply, growing gentle density, and providing more housing options for a city with a large number of multi-generational families and elder citizens.
“Housing is a top priority and these plans are one more way that we’re helping to make it easier to get building,” Andrew Whittemore, Commissioner of Planning and Building for the City, said in the June media release.
ince then, Whittemore tells STOREYS the City has seen 30 inquiries into building garden suites with one making its way to the application stage. One application in two months is obviously not the blowout response many hoped for, but the City sees it as a good start.
“I really was quite pleased with the response over all,” Whittemore says. “So many people from the industry reached out with plans that we could use and other things to make the process easier for residents, and I think 30 inquiries is pretty good for this type of thing, especially in Mississauga where there was some resistance to this program in the beginning.”