From the Planning Rationale Report:
The proposal is to replace the two existing buildings on the subject site (which essentially appear as one building) with a new mixed-use development in the form of a 9-storey mid-rise building. The Scott Mission will continue to operate in the proposed development using the podium and basement levels of the building to provide community and social services including a municipal shelter, a food/clothing bank, a cafeteria and kitchen, and other types of community/social services such as counselling, life skills training and assembly space for ministry services and worship. The new Scott Mission premises will provide an updated and larger space providing a total of 5,380m2 gross floor area which provides a net increase of approximately 1,160m2 from the existing Scott Mission buildings (4,220m2). The proposed development also includes a total of approximately 6,255m2 residential gross floor area providing 109 new deeply affordable rental units
While the architecture of the proposal is unremarkable, that could be said of the site in its current condition.
The addition of more than 100 deeply affordable housing units is to be lauded here, and that they've also managed a green roof, and a fairly intimate scale is also a positive.
My only reservation would be in regards to the new shelter space.
Obviously, there's a shelter there now, so that is not a concern, nor am I particularly phased by the growth in beds by 10.
I am, however, concerned by the style of the arrangement:
The municipal shelter is designed in a dormitory style with 10 dorm rooms in total to provide living accommodation for people in need of sheltering.
To the best of my knowledge, the City itself is no longer building larger scale dorm rooms (the above would seem to suggest 8--10 per room)
Best practice is now SRO (single room occupancy) style accommodation.
Where shared rooms are used, it's rare to see more than 4 to a room in new designs.
The reasons for this are straight forward.
Shelters are notorious for safety issues for their users, and many homeless avoid using them, even in non-pandemic times for this reason.
One person per room minimizes interpersonal conflict, while also providing residents/clients more privacy.
That said, in the world of Covid and weighing the risk of future pandemics, I can't imagine people thinking 8-10 per room would be suitable from a public health risk point-of-view.
I would like to see this aspect of the proposal revisited.