Can You Build a Sixplex in Toronto–Danforth? Ward 14
Toronto–Danforth (Ward 14) 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
Ward 14 runs from the Don Valley Parkway east to Coxwell Avenue, and from Lake Ontario north to the area around O’Connor Drive (consult the official map for exact boundaries). The ward takes in Riverdale, Riverside, Leslieville, Greektown / the Danforth, Playter Estates, the Gerrard India Bazaar and East Chinatown. 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.
- Riverdale. Victorian and Edwardian semis and detached homes in brick — classic bay-and-gable stock — on the slope west toward the Don Valley.
- Playter Estates. A small early-1900s enclave of Edwardian and Tudor houses with wide porches, north of the Danforth; a recognized heritage-character pocket.
- Leslieville & Riverside. Former industrial blocks and Victorian workers’ cottages, now a mix of infill and retail along Queen Street East.
- Greektown / the Danforth. The commercial spine along Danforth Avenue, with residential streets running back off it.
- Gerrard India Bazaar & East Chinatown. Established cultural retail strips that anchor the ward’s eastern and southern edges.
Getting around
Line 2 (Bloor–Danforth) runs the length of the Danforth — Broadview, Chester, Pape, Donlands, Greenwood and Coxwell stations sit in or along the ward. The 504/505 streetcars cross the south end, and the Ontario Line, now under construction, is set to add stations toward Greektown and Leslieville (confirm the current schedule and station locations before relying on them). The Don Valley Parkway runs the western edge. That transit access is part of why the corridor is intensifying and why demand for rental here tends to hold up.
Downtown access & lifestyle
Ward 14 sits right against the downtown core — just across the Don River — so the financial district is a short subway or Don Valley Parkway trip, and much of the ward is close to downtown. That access, paired with the amenities, is part of the ward’s appeal. The Danforth is a well-known restaurant and nightlife strip — its Greektown stretch hosts the annual Taste of the Danforth — while Leslieville and Queen Street East have built a reputation for independent cafés, restaurants and design shops. Riverdale and Withrow parks give the family side of the demand somewhere to land, and the south end of the ward opens onto the lake at Ashbridges Bay Park — beach, boardwalk and the Martin Goodman Trail — with the Port Lands and the Leslie Street Spit close by. (The Beach village proper, around Queen and Woodbine, sits just east of Coxwell in Ward 19.) For a rental operator, walkable, transit-rich, amenity-dense neighbourhoods with water and parks at the edge tend to see steady rental demand.
Schools & families
The Danforth and Riverdale are a long-standing family draw, and the public schools are a real part of it. Well-known local options include Jackman Avenue Public School (with an English and early-French-immersion stream), Riverdale Collegiate, and Danforth Technical, which runs a math, science and technology focus. Check current provincial EQAO results and the exact catchment for any specific address before relying on them.
The numbers
From the ward’s 2021 City of Toronto Census profile:
| Population (2021) | 104,555 |
| Renter households | 45% |
| Predominant housing form | 78% ground-related (39% single or semi-detached) |
| Median household income (2020) | $93,000 |
| Housing-stock character | Predominantly pre-1960 |
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
The ward skews to established and family-forming households rather than a young, transient crowd. The median age is 40.8 (a shade above the city), the largest cohorts are people in their thirties and forties — roughly a third of residents — and there are proportionally more young children than the Toronto average, while the twenty-something share actually runs below the city. Read as a rental market, that may point to demand for larger units — the family-sized two- and three-bedroom suites a sixplex can add — though achievable rents and absorption need current lease and vacancy evidence.
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 14 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.