House Divided: How the Missing Middle Will Solve Toronto's Housing Crisis

What happens to a city that's become too expensive to live in?

Toronto's leafy neighbourhoods are famously stable. Yet the strict protections afforded homeowners have made housing unaffordable and unavailable for rapidly growing segments of the population. If current trends continue unchecked, the city risks not only increasing social polarization and economic instability, but also an exodus by the next generation. House Divided is a provocative and timely anthology whose diverse contributors unpack how we arrived at this impasse and, more importantly, offer innovative ideas for fixing a badly broken system.

These thought-provoking essays examine how targeted planning reforms combined with 'missing middle' housing types — such as semis, duplexes, walkups, and laneway units — represent the answer to one of the greatest challenges facing cities today: how to accommodate growing urban populations in an affordable and sustainable way.