CELPIP Listening Part 6 Practice Test: Basement Suites Test a Neighbourhood Zoning Rule

MAN: Pelmont city council has been asked to change a zoning rule that has shaped the Quarry Hollow neighbourhood for more than forty years. The rule allows only one household in each house, so owners there cannot legally rent out a basement or a converted upper floor. A residents' group submitted a formal request last week asking council to remove that limit across the neighbourhood. Thandiwe Mabaso, who speaks for the group behind the request, argues that the change would add homes without any new building. She pictures a neighbourhood whose houses look exactly as they do now while quietly holding more people, and she told council that no street in Quarry Hollow would need to change its appearance. Under the plan, each suite would have its own entrance, and owners would not have to provide an off-street parking space for a suite under fifty square metres; anything larger would still need one space. Her group estimates that about forty houses could add a suite within the next five years. Roland Kirchner, president of the Quarry Hollow Homeowners' Association, does not dispute that estimate, and he accepts that the region is short of rental housing. He has no objection to suites in principle. His worry is the streets themselves: forty more households would mean cars parked along both curbs, and he expects snow clearing to slow and fire trucks to struggle. Kirchner's own daughter and her children live in his basement, an arrangement he describes as family rather than a rental. On the parking, Mabaso replies that the city can withhold overnight permits on any street where clearing slows. City planners have pointed to a review of suites registered since 2021, which found that only about one household in three owned a car. The review covered only suites within a ten-minute walk of the Ferndale rail line, and most of Quarry Hollow lies well beyond it. Councillor Bianca Szalay says the review has not persuaded her, and she would like to see it repeated locally. She will vote for the change, she adds, only on the condition that it begins as a two-year trial open to owners who live in their own houses, with the rules returning to council at the end. Council is expected to vote next month. If the change passes, owners could begin applying in the spring, though only under the terms of the trial.