What records explain accessory apartments and garden suites at an Oshawa home?

The City's page says accessory apartments are permitted in single detached, semi-detached, duplex and street townhouse dwellings, or in a residential accessory building, in the R1, R2, R3, R5, OSR-A, OS-ORM, AG-A, AG-B and AG-ORM zones, subject to section 5.12 of Zoning By-law 60-94. A lot may hold at most three dwelling units, and at most one of them in an accessory building, which must also meet section 5.1. No accessory apartment is permitted in hazard lands, or in areas without the access the authority requires, as identified by the Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority, and each unit needs one parking space beyond the two for the main home.

A unit built through the building permit process receives a two-unit house registration certificate within 60 days of the final inspection. A second unit created before July 1994 is legalized through the City's Municipal Licensing office; one created after that needs a building permit. A general permission does not make an existing basement apartment lawful; the registration and the permit are the records that do.

• Accessory apartments: the City's page on zones, unit limits, hazard lands, parking and registration

Extra units allowed is in the free check as a summary of the City's rule, from our hand-kept table of city rules, and the full report reads the lot's zone where the City's zoning map is open data we can use; where it isn't, the report's line says where the City publishes it. Neither is confirmation that a particular unit holds a permit or may be occupied.

Free check: pick “Extra units allowed” See the sample report