![Housing the Unhoused](https://az-media.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/awards/2024/06/12145939/AZ-Awards-2024-01_HousingTheUnhoused_SvN_KathleenFu_Illustration-1600x900.jpg)
The solution to the housing emergency — a crisis as acute in Toronto as it is seemingly everywhere — is to give unhoused people homes. But construction takes time, and people need places to live now. With a new proposal, Housing the Unhoused, local firm SvN is offering a transitional solution: a suite of modular 8.8-square-metre cabins to be constructed quickly on vacant lots in neighbourhoods near transit. The private units will be built to Passive House principles, made of low-carbon materials like cross-laminated timber, and clustered around shared amenities. They will also be elegant and cozy, proving that a temporary solution needn’t be a slapdash one.
![](https://az-media.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/awards/2024/06/12145946/AZ-Awards-2024-06_HousingTheUnhoused_SvN_Diagram.jpg)
Team: Aaron Budd (SvN) with John van Nostrand (Two Steps Home); Jina Lee and Katerina Gloushenkova (SvN); and Jackson Wyatt (CABN)
This suite of modular cabins is conceptualized to be constructed quickly on vacant lots.