CELPIP Listening Part 6 Practice Test: Rental Homes in Backyards

NARRATOR: Across Canada, people searching for ways to ease the housing shortage have set their sights on an unlikely patch of ground: the backyard. Small detached rental homes, often called garden suites, are now permitted in a handful of cities, and councils elsewhere are under mounting pressure to follow suit. Supporters see, with some justification, an elegant way to add housing without bulldozing established neighbourhoods; opponents fear that cherished green space will vanish one cottage at a time.

NARRATOR: Marcus Lee, a city planner in Edmonton who helped draft his city's rules, makes no apology for his enthusiasm. In older neighbourhoods, he observes, school enrolment has dwindled and corner stores have shuttered, because far fewer people live on each street than did fifty years ago. A garden suite, in his view, quietly reverses that decline: it may shelter a university student, a newly arrived nurse, or an elderly parent who wants independence without moving across town. Lee is also quick to point out that the extra rent often helps owners keep up with their mortgage, a benefit he believes is routinely underestimated. And unlike apartment towers, he adds, these units require no new roads or sewer lines, since they simply connect to what is already there.

NARRATOR: Not everyone is persuaded, however. Joanne Whitfield, who chairs a residents' association in Ottawa, considers the policy well-intentioned but naive. Her street lost three mature maple trees last year to construction, and she worries that lots designed for one family are being crammed with two. Whitfield also questions whether these units genuinely relieve the shortage. Building a garden suite can cost upwards of two hundred thousand dollars, she notes, so landlords inevitably charge rents that ordinary tenants can scarcely afford. Some, she claims, end up as short-term vacation rentals, which serve tourists rather than local families. And she suspects that neighbours, rather than councillors, will be left to deal with the parking and the noise.

NARRATOR: Lee concedes that the trees are a legitimate grievance and that cities ought to protect them, but he dismisses the vacation-rental argument as exaggerated, since his city's bylaw requires tenancies of at least a month. Even so, the two agree on more than one might expect: both favour tighter design standards, limits on height, and a genuine say for neighbours before anything is built. If the fine print is done well, backyards may yet prove to be more than a footnote in the housing debate.