The design of Vancouver's new type of modular building for the homeless

This is the design of Vancouver's new type of temporary modular housing building for the homeless

Artistic rendering of the new single-storey modular housing buildings at 1500 Main Street, Vancouver. (BC Housing)

Nearly six years ago, temporary modular housing buildings first began to pop up in Vancouver as a rapid solution to bring people living in the street and in shelters into more comfortable indoor housing.

For the most part, Vancouverites and the individuals who are assigned to live in these buildings have known modular housing buildings to be stacked two- and three-storey buildings.

Over the coming months, three more modular housing buildings for individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness will open — but they will deviate from the stacked design typology of Vancouver’s existing modular housing sites.

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As announced earlier this week, the provincial government is turning two City-owned sites into temporary modular housing, and they will be achieved in a speed that has never been achieved before from conception this fall to opening by March 2023. Site preparation for assembly will begin very soon.

These forthcoming structures will be just one storey, modelled after work camp housing for mining and logging operations in remote locations.

A new artistic rendering released by BC Housing shows how portable trailers — resembling construction site office trailers or portable school trailers — will be placed side-by-side to create the single-storey modular buildings.

1500 main street vancouver modular housing homeless

Artistic rendering of the new single-storey modular housing buildings at 1500 Main Street, Vancouver. (BC Housing)

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Site plan of the single-storey modular housing building at 2132 Ash Street, Vancouver. (BC Housing)

While Vancouver’s current modular housing typology features private single-occupancy suites with a kitchenette and private bathroom, the new buildings under the “bridge-to-housing” model will have a private room with shared bathrooms and amenities and a common kitchen — and for these reasons, the new buildings are intended to be highly temporary accommodations.

These new buildings under the “bridge-to-housing” model are intended to fill the gap between those living in shelters, but they are also part of the overall solution of filling the needs of Downtown Eastside residents and moving towards the dissolution of the Hastings Street and Crab Park encampments. According to BC Housing, the residents will live in these buildings under a fixed term, before they move to new longer-term or permanent housing currently under development.

Such single-storey modular typologies for housing the homeless are new for Vancouver, but they have been an established typology elsewhere in the province, including briefly within Surrey City Centre up until about four years ago. Single-storey portable structures, similar to Surrey’s public school portable buildings, were found at several locations around the “Surrey Strip” of 135A Street.

surrey city centre temporary modular housing building homeless 1

July 2018: Single-storey portable buildings within Surrey City Centre for housing the homeless. (Google Maps)

While the multi-storey modular building typology already allows for an accelerated implementation timeline compared to conventional structures, the extremely simple single-storey building typology enables such structures to be ready even quicker.

Earlier this week, the provincial government announced these single-storey modular buildings will be located at 1500 Main Street, where two buildings will be constructed for a total of 60 units. This location near SkyTrain Main Street-Science World Station is adjacent to 220 Terminal Avenue — Vancouver’s first temporary modular housing building, which opened in 2017 with 40 units in three storeys — and just east of the area’s McDonald’s restaurant.

The second location will be at 2132 Ash Street on a surface parking lot next to SkyTrain Olympic Village Station and a 2018-built temporary modular housing building with 52 units in three storeys. There will be 30 units for this single-storey modular building at the secondary location.

In total, the provincial and municipal government’s strategy will provide capacity for 90 transitional homes on City-owned land by early Spring 2023. The single-storey buildings will remain at the locations for up to three years.

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