Debate rising for illegal front-yard 'parking pads' in Toronto

Nearly every neighbourhood street in the city has some: front-yard parking pads.

They are usually brick or concrete parking spaces large enough for one car, at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the front door of a home. The parking pad reaches as far as the homeowner's porch. They are more present in dense downtown areas where street parking is scarce.

However, as many as 8,000 of these parking pads in Toronto have been built without the city’s permission or licence; they are illegal.

The public works and infrastructure committee is ready to turn the spotlight back on these illegal parking pads after a report was requested by Coun. Mary Margaret McMahon (Ward 32, Beaches-East York) last summer.

McMahon is well aware of the parking problem in the city and believes regulators should be “helping solve the problem, not making it worse,” according to CBC.

“For me it’s an equity issue” McMahon explains. “It’s not fair that we have 8,000 parking pads in the city of Toronto that people don’t have to pay for right now, while others do.” Residents seem to be piling the pressure on their councillors – they want something to be done.

Those legal pads, licensed by the city, cost around $270 per year, per household. You know the pad is legal when you can see a small but conspicuous white licence plaque on the owner’s porch.

Some councillors want an amnesty applied to illegal pads, while others are “dead set against” pardoning the illegal parking spaces. Coun. Mike Layton wants the illegal pads ripped out at the owner’s expense.

"The reality is that it's more valuable to us as an open space, as green space, than it is as a parking spot," Layton said. "They need to be restored to the function they did before they were paved over."

In response, other councillors believe that forcing regular homeowners to remove the pads would be counterproductive. Some may have purchased the homes with the pads already installed.

What city representatives want is an equalling of the playing field, or the parking pad, as it were.

“You have to recognize that people have to live their lives – they’ve got cars,” Counc. Stephen Holyday said. “They’ve had this pad in place for years. Life has to go on. Maybe there’s a way to correct this situation, to start collecting money, to make it a fairer system.”

The debate will only continue. This parking pad issue will be raised May 8th, at the public works committee meeting.