Can You Build a Sixplex in Scarborough North? Ward 23
Scarborough North (Ward 23) is one of the nine Toronto wards where up to six residential units may be permitted as-of-right on an eligible detached-house lot, under Zoning By-law 654-2025 and Official Plan Amendment 818 (June 2025), subject to the zoning by-law and applicable law. Being in the ward gets a lot to the starting line. Whether six units actually fit — and whether the project pencils — is decided by the specific lot, not the ward.
Two things to keep straight: the sixplex permission (five or six units) applies to detached houses only. Semi-detached and townhouse lots aren’t eligible for the fifth and sixth units — but they can still add up to four units under Toronto’s city-wide multiplex rules.
Updated August 2026 · MBL Developments · one of a nine-part series, one post per ward.
What the ward covers
Northeast Scarborough. Bounded by Steeles Avenue East (the Toronto–Markham city limit) to the north, Highway 401 to the south, roughly Midland Avenue to the west, and Neilson Road / the Rouge River to the east (confirm exact boundaries on toronto.ca). It is the only one of the nine sixplex wards outside the Toronto and East York area, with a more suburban, postwar built form. The ward takes in the northeast corner of Scarborough along the Steeles and Finch corridors, including Agincourt North, Milliken and Steeles, extending toward Malvern in the east, with L'Amoreaux adjacent to the south. Ward lines follow specific streets and get redrawn from time to time, so treat any neighbourhood list as a guide, not a survey — the City publishes the official ward boundaries on toronto.ca.
Neighbourhoods & built form
The character changes street to street, and the built form is what matters most for a sixplex — it’s the raw material you’re working with, and the heritage-character pockets are where the “does it fit” question gets hardest.
- Agincourt North. Postwar detached brick bungalows and two-storey homes built largely in the 1960s–1980s, on wider suburban lots, interspersed with townhouse and apartment clusters. The larger typical lot sizes here can be an advantage for a sixplex footprint compared with narrow downtown lots.
- Milliken. Former farmland urbanized mainly in the 1980s; detached houses on generous lots plus townhouse and mid/high-rise apartment clusters near Steeles and Kennedy. Home to a large, long-established Chinese-Canadian community and anchored by Milliken District Park and its community recreation centre.
- Steeles. City neighbourhood along the Steeles/Finch corridor east of Kennedy; a mix of detached and semi-detached homes, townhouse blocks and apartment towers, with retail plazas fronting the arterials.
- Malvern (western edge). Planned 1970s–80s suburban subdivision of detached and semi-detached homes with townhouse clusters and some apartment sites; large, regular lots typical of master-planned Scarborough.
Getting around
No subway serves this ward — an honest point of difference from the downtown sixplex wards. Transit is bus-and-GO based: TTC surface routes run along Finch, Steeles (e.g. 53 Steeles East), Kennedy and McCowan, feeding Line 4 (Sheppard) and Line 1 stations to the south. Two GO Transit stations on the Stouffville line, Milliken (which serves the ward) and Agincourt (just south of it) connect to Union Station, with a proposed Finch–Kennedy infill station (confirm current status with Metrolinx) planned between them. Highway access is via Highway 401 to the south and Highway 404 to the west; car ownership is high.
Downtown access & lifestyle
Suburban and amenity-rich in a plaza-and-mall sense rather than a walkable main-street sense. Large multicultural retail defines the area: the Splendid China / former Market Village complex sits at Steeles and Kennedy, with Pacific Mall just across Steeles in Markham, and big-box plazas line the arterials. Green space includes Milliken District Park (32 hectares) with its community recreation centre, which hosts a City fireworks show each Canada Day. The downtown core is far — a GO-train or long transit ride away — so this is not a downtown-adjacent location; rental demand should be assessed from current, property-specific lease, vacancy and household data; ward demographics alone do not establish demand.
Schools & families
Served by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB), with placement by home-address catchment; both boards operate elementary and secondary schools across the ward. No single standout school or EQAO result is asserted here as verified, so this is a neutral note — confirm the specific catchment for any address rather than rely on a ward-wide claim.
The numbers
From the ward’s 2021 City of Toronto Census profile:
| Population (2021) | 94,025 |
| Renter households | 21% |
| Predominant housing form | 78% ground-related (49% single or semi-detached) |
| Median household income (2020) | $87,000 |
| Housing-stock character | Postwar suburban, mostly 1971–1990 |
Figures are ward-wide 2021 Census counts (income is for 2020), from City Planning’s ward profile. “Renter households” is tenant-occupied dwellings as a share of private households reporting tenure; “ground-related” is the City ward-profile grouping of low-rise and ground-oriented dwellings (detached, semi-detached, row houses, duplexes and apartments in buildings under five storeys), from the 2021 Census. They describe the ward; they don’t rate it, and every lot inside is different.
Who lives here
An established, family-oriented and comparatively older suburban population. Median age is 42.8 vs 39.6 citywide, and seniors make up 20% of residents vs 17% for Toronto, while the 30–39 group is under-represented (13.0% vs 16.6%). The ward has a substantial immigrant population (2021 Census; confirm exact category and share), with a notably strong East and South Asian presence — Milliken in particular has a long-established Chinese-Canadian community — reflected in the area's multicultural retail and community institutions.
What that means for a sixplex — and what it doesn’t
The six-unit framework applies to eligible detached-house lots — not semis or townhouses, which can still add up to four units under the city-wide multiplex rules. So the raw material that matters here is the ward’s detached-house stock, read lot by lot. That is exactly where the real questions begin, because none of the ward-level numbers above can tell you what a specific lot will carry.
Being in Ward 23 means the six-unit framework may apply to an eligible detached lot here, subject to the zoning by-law and applicable law. It does not mean six units fit, or that the building is otherwise compliant or pencils. The same lot-by-lot gates apply here as everywhere:
- Lot geometry. Frontage and depth, minus setbacks, set the buildable envelope. On a narrow lot a full sixplex may not fit; some sites instead support a smaller main-building multiplex plus a qualifying garden or laneway suite — a different legal and financing object, under separate rules and approvals.
- Overlays, heritage, and specific zoning. The ward is the boundary; the actual zoning, heritage designations, and overlays run lot by lot and can quietly cap what you build.
- Trees, easements, servicing. A protected tree, a registered easement, or a servicing constraint can constrain the design, add cost, or reduce the unit count — long before price is the issue.
- What’s in the ground. On any lot with an existing or former structure, environmental status is unknown until it’s investigated. Real cost, real gate.
A qualified zoning review on the specific lot is step one; where the ward map, the by-law and a professional review differ, rely on the current by-law, official City mapping and qualified planning/legal advice — not the ward map.
How you’d actually evaluate a lot here
The sequence is the same in every one of the nine wards: confirm the lot can carry six units on paper (geometry), confirm the market supports the rents (closed-lease evidence, not asking prices), and confirm the numbers pencil at a price you can actually pay. It runs lot by lot, not ward by ward — that lot-level due diligence is what determines whether a sixplex is actually buildable.
This is one of nine ward posts. Start with the overview: Where you can build a sixplex in Toronto — the nine as-of-right wards. New to the financing side? Our CMHC primer covers the mechanics, no signup to watch.