Tax Sale Guide Home
Road Allowances
Chapter: AFTER TAX SALES
What's the deal with un-opened allowances? Is the property within the allowance owned by the township? Can it be used to access the property?
Gap
A closed road allowance is usually some sort of access area that is not owned, meaning anyone can trespass...it's effectively crown land. However, some people have sole options to purchase road allowances. For example, in cottage country there is a shore road allowance in front of every waterfront lot in Ontario. This is an old government law declaring all shore waterfront not able to be owned. I guess the idea was that everyone should be free to have access to the water. Many people who own waterfront property are not actually aware of the fact that they do not own 66' from the shore into their property. In recent years, townships (probably for extra cash) have been declaring the shore road allowance in front of certain properties as excess. Once that's done (there's a process of town council of course), the owner of the land behind it is free to petition that the land (i.e. shore road allowance) be closed (bought by them). In this way, it is completely and wholly owned by the landowner behind so no one can cross their shoreline. In most cases, it doesn't really matter because you can't really walk on the shore in front of someone's property anyway as you would have to cross their property to get to it or other people's property. This is the case in the Kawarthas, Muskoka, Haliburton, etc.
Where this original law has really shown it's worth is in places like Wasaga Beach. Nobody owns the shore road allowance there and this has kept the entire beach open to everyone. Houses are set back from the water, even the ones directly on the water, but they actually don't own the property. Anyone can put their beach chairs directly in front of your property. Those types of beaches have never allowed people to close (purchase) their shore road allowances, so they all remained unopened.
In cases where there is no beach, there is sometimes a thin strip of land between two sets of lots of say, ten or twelve. The county or province years ago may have set aside these occasional strips in case they wanted access and/or wanted to provide public access to another road, a water area, or other piece of crown land. These road allowances are never closed (purchased) so they maintain ownership and everyone's allowed to pass. Normally in these situations, the road allowances remain (and have remained) unopened for years and are destined to remain that way so access is there.
BASICALLY, if there's road allowance to a property, you should ask who owns it and who is allowed to close (or purchase) if anyone. The best answer is you cannot close this road allowance as the county/township, etc. owns it and will not declare it surplus. This means you can use it forever to crossover.
Even if you buy a property and someone tries to close (purchase) this in the future, all neighbours are allowed to veto it, so that's good too.