Neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood guides to living, buying and selling across Toronto, written by Jatin Dua of RE/MAX Quantum Realty.
There is a definition of a rooming house written into the Toronto Municipal Code that applies to Parkdale and to no other part of the city. The licence it requires cannot be transferred on a sale, and the by-law wants 90 days’ notice before the operator changes. Parkdale holds 112 of the 403 licensed multi-tenant house records in the City’s file.
In 1998 the City tripled the minimum lot size on a block of Islington Avenue for the express purpose of stopping severances, and said so in writing. That zoning is still on the books. A provincial statute in force since 2 June 2026 can void it without a Council vote. Meanwhile the two golf clubs are the reverse of their names, Hurricane Hazel’s deadliest street is inside these boundaries, and the City’s own dataset drops a 40-storey tower into a neighbourhood it is not in.
A quarter of Markland Wood sits inside an Official Plan policy area where new residential development is prohibited, and it reaches Bloor Street West. The golf course is zoned OG, where no residential use of any kind is permitted, and has no development application of any kind on file. There is no Major Transit Station Area anywhere here. And the City has authorised construction traffic control at Renforth until 31 March 2031.
Baby Point became a heritage conservation district on 18 December 2024 and the by-law is registered on title. Pulling a tree stump there now needs a heritage permit. Bloor West Village was studied for a heritage district for eight years and then failed a provincial arithmetic test. And the City’s own Official Plan PDF still prints a policy that was repealed in September 2025.
The City has no neighbourhood called Sunnylea. Old Mill has the lowest minimum density target of all 120 Minister-approved station areas because 62.7 per cent of it is park, cemetery and river. There is a live 39-storey application against a mapped 14-metre height limit. And on 272 addresses the zoning caps the whole house at 185 square metres.
The City has recommended a Heritage Conservation District over 292 Junction properties. Its own display boards say properties are not protected under the Ontario Heritage Act until the HCD Plan is adopted, and the Plan has not been written. Meanwhile Humberside Collegiate runs at 133 per cent of capacity, and 178 development files sit on the City’s books in and around the neighbourhood.
In the ravine by-law there is no such thing as a small tree: a permit is required for any tree of any size, and the fine runs from $500 to $100,000 each. A ravine permit also needs a geotechnical slope-stability report before you get anywhere near a building permit. And the heritage study for Bloor West Village was completed years ago – the district was never designated.
Roncesvalles is one of the few parts of Toronto where a detached house can legally become a sixplex, because of a by-law passed on 26 June 2025 that most of the city did not get. The main street itself is capped at 16 metres. The local collegiate is at 133 per cent of capacity and four of the five nearest elementary schools are closed to out-of-area students.
The Ontario Line is exempt from the Environmental Assessment Act by regulation, and there are no hearings of necessity before an expropriation. Fifteen per cent of the 2,647 properties studied along this stretch were rated high risk for soil and groundwater contamination. And your station platform will be elevated over Queen Street East, not under it.
The Official Plan caps the busiest corner in Cooksville at 18 storeys. Five towers of 43, 43, 46, 39 and 34 storeys are proposed a few hundred metres away, inside a pipeline of 8,627 units. Plus the brand-new GO station with rush-hour-only trains, the 304 buildings a regulatory flood can inundate, and the one per cent hospital levy proposed to start in 2029.
