04-27-2016, 04:04 PM
Right. A "den" doesn't necessarily mean student accommodations. It doesn't necessarily even mean more people, though it could, regardless of whether it's a "real" den or a bedroom masquerading as a den.
If you want to know how many rooms that are usable as bedrooms there are, then don't hang your hat on the name. Instead, the city should count "bedroom-equivalent" rooms, maybe anything larger than 8 square metres, for example. That will give a reasonable metric of how many people might live in a building, although it's hard to estimate how many normally-unoccupied spare bedrooms or actual dens there would be in any given building, as that really depends on the people living there. Same for the demographic of the residents.
As to parking, if Waterloo were to relax its parking requirement, this would become a non-issue. The number of cars in the building will not (significantly) exceed the number of parking spots anyway, as overnight street parking is not permitted.
If you want to know how many rooms that are usable as bedrooms there are, then don't hang your hat on the name. Instead, the city should count "bedroom-equivalent" rooms, maybe anything larger than 8 square metres, for example. That will give a reasonable metric of how many people might live in a building, although it's hard to estimate how many normally-unoccupied spare bedrooms or actual dens there would be in any given building, as that really depends on the people living there. Same for the demographic of the residents.
As to parking, if Waterloo were to relax its parking requirement, this would become a non-issue. The number of cars in the building will not (significantly) exceed the number of parking spots anyway, as overnight street parking is not permitted.