Office conversions help address Toronto’s homeless crisis

Key Takeaways:

• Toronto is exploring innovative solutions to address its homelessness crisis, such as converting underutilized office spaces into shelters. This approach not only meets immediate housing needs but also repurposes vacant urban areas.
• Converting office buildings into shelters offers several advantages, including faster project timelines and potentially lower costs due to existing infrastructure.
• However, challenges such as insufficient natural lighting and unforeseen structural or mechanical issues can complicate these conversions.
• Projects led by RJC Engineers have significantly increased Toronto’s shelter capacity, adding hundreds of beds. These conversions are crucial as the city’s shelter system is near or at full capacity every night, highlighting the urgent need for expanded infrastructure.

The Whole Story:

As Toronto is facing a worsening homelessness crisis, officials are looking for innovative solutions to house some of the city’s most vulnerable people.

According to the city’s Shelter System Flow Data, an estimated 10,627 individuals were “actively homeless” over the past three months. Meanwhile, as per Daily Shelter and Overnight Service Usage, 9,718 people utilized the city’s shelter system just this past Sunday and the numbers are trending up.

One solution that has gained traction is transforming empty office spaces into shelters. Experts say this approach offers a pragmatic solution for addressing immediate housing needs while repurposing underutilized urban areas, serving a dual purpose for the community.

RJC Engineers has led several adaptive re-use projects as part of the City of Toronto’s initiative to expand the number of permanent shelter beds across the city. These include the 4117 Lawrence Avenue East Shelter Renovation and the 101 Placer Court Shelter Renovation.

4117 Lawrence Avenue East involved the significant redevelopment of an existing 16,000 sq. ft., two-storey commercial office into a 90-bed homeless shelter. Work included a total building interior renovation and space layout, commercial kitchen, complete overcladding and re-roofing, seismic upgrades and structural reinforcing, a new elevator shaft, upgraded ventilation, heat recovery, plumbing, power, and lightings systems, and new outdoor amenity space and asphalt paved parking lot.

The 101 Placer Court project involved retrofitting an existing 18,000 sq. ft., two-storey commercial office building for use as a shelter. RJC was the prime consultant, contract administrator, and structural, building envelope, and civil engineer for the new 87-bed facility.

These conversions have been part of the city’s overall strategy to rapidly increase shelter space for years.

RJC Principal Paul Fritze explained that in 2018 there was an initiative from Toronto City Council to create 1,000 new homeless shelter beds in three years and expand the homeless shelter infrastructure.

“At the time there was an acknowledgement that there was a growing need as homelessness is becoming more prevalent and present in day to day life,” said Fritze. “And it was acknowledged that the infrastructure required expansion.” 

Fritze noted that the infrastructure that existed was also getting run down and needed investment to fit those spaces out and increase the available capacity to offset buildings receiving repairs.

The city committed money and had a timeline to deliver new shelter buildings. Conversions were part of the solution from the city side to expedite the construction process and reduce the schedule of when these spaces could open. 

You need nimble, solutions-driven people to think on their feet who are not intimidated by a site condition coming up.

RJC Principal Paul Fritze

“Schedule is the primary driver,” said Fritze. “You are able to accelerate the delivery of a functional building by virtue of already having the building envelope in place, already having the structure in place. You are not dealing with unforeseen planning, site approval applications and you are mitigating risks when it comes to shoring and excavation.”

If all things go well, the price point can be reduced if you get a solid building. Fritze explained that with a good building you can retain a lot its existing infrastructure including mechanical, HVAC and elevator systems. This was extremely useful during the pandemic when many mechanical system parts were challenging to source and often had long lead times.

But that in essence is the risk: what kind of building are you going to get? Sometimes when stripping a building down to its bones, surprises can emerge, require an agile team that excels in solving problems. One of the primary constraints is lighting as the building code requires living areas have ample lighting while offices layouts allow for windowless rooms.

Unforeseen issues with a building’s systems which surface after it’s stripped down. Fritze said these projects often take the building right down to their structure which can reveal fires separations, deficiencies with mechanical or electrical systems, or even structural conditions concealed by finishes.

“You can’t put it back together without complying with the local building code so planning for some unplanned items to come up is a necessity,” said Fritze. “The main way to mitigate these issues is to have a team of consultants and contractors familiar with these projects. You need nimble, solutions-driven people to think on their feet who are not intimidated by a site condition coming up.”

Another major consideration is how the building has been laid out.

“That’s the biggest challenge—to fit the project into that floor plate as it is conflicting in terms of their ideal shapes and where windows are,” said Fritze. “That’s the primary constraint that makes these conversions difficult, if the building is not well laid out with windows.”

Typically, for a shelter, the city is looking for a four to five-storey building with around 25,000 square feet that could create 75 to 100 shelter beds. They are generally class B or C office buildings which often have floor plates more favourable for shelter spaces.

“Our team has been responsible for directly creating 404 beds in the Toronto Shelter system and that system is near or at 100% every night,” said Fritze. “We probably wouldn’t have been able to turnaround these projects if it wasn’t for a conversions approach.”

Fritze noted that Toronto Shelter & Support Services has been an excellent client to work with and is fighting hard for unhoused people in the region.

“As a structural engineers, we don’t necessarily get to do such socially impact work every day, so this is near and dear to us as it creates a tangible difference,” said Fritze.