This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

As you fly into Pearson Airport in Toronto, you can see Canada's largest city take shape beneath you.

Downtown, there is a dense core of tall glassy buildings along

the waterfront of Lake Ontario. Outside of that, short single-family homes

sprawl out in every direction. This is the view reporter Jay Coburn saw

out of his window as he moved to Canada in 2019. In my head I knew exactly where I

wanted to live a real big city apartment, like the classic

brownstone walk-ups you might see in New York, or the three-story stone

apartment buildings with iron staircases you see in Montreal. I had this romantic notion of living in one of those early

20th century apartments, you know great lighting, a little exposed brick, maybe even a nice fireplace.

Is that really so much to ask for?

But at first, Jay struggled to find anything like that dream apartment in Toronto.

Instead, as a renter, I found myself looking at a lot of 400 square foot condos high up in some shiny and soulless towers and some dank basement apartments under some rich person's house.

All of these options were really expensive.

I kept wondering where are all the low-rise apartment buildings,

the kinds of buildings you find in abundance in Montreal or New York or Chicago.

Jay was looking for a middle ground and not finding it, something in between the extremes of single-family

homes and big generic condo towers.

But there just weren't a lot of middle-sized rental buildings in Toronto.

Lots of cities are in the same boat as Toronto, places like Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston and Vancouver.

All of these cities have a pronounced lack of mid-sized buildings.

Right now, this is one of the

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