Challenges Rethink 4 Walls is addressing:
Numerous Canadian urban centers are battling a dual crisis. As they navigate declining commercial occupancy and revenues, they are simultaneously encountering an urgent, rising need for affordable housing, particularly for the most marginalized residents in our society.
Rethink 4 Walls Initiative
Non-traditional affordable housing needs:
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Indigenous individuals - are significantly over-represented in the shelter system (Statscan, 2024),
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Mental health issues are twice as likely to live in inadequate housing (Statscan, 2021)
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59% of Canadian youth (20-35 years) are “very concerned” about their ability to afford housing (Statscan, 2025).
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New Canadians (a place to get establised)
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Seniors living
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Homeless alternatives
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Recent graduates wanting to live close to downtown work opportunities
Downtown cores are facing increasing commercial vacancy rates, especially with older Class B and C buildings. Building owners are looking for ways to get more value from many under performing assets.
Goal #3
By increasing the number of retrofit building projects with innovative and sustainable methods, we will speed up the benefits to urban centres and ensure downtowns remain vibrant, while reducing the need for new construction and the resulting GHG emmisions.
Increase the number of new living spaces that reuse already existing concrete structures, as each new ground-up development contributes to additional greenhouse gas emissions.
Goal #2
Retrofitting many under utilized commercial office space into residential multi-family structures, or non-traditional shared housing spaces for in need populations, is ,
The next next Stage will be to create roadmaps for these Stakeholders to more easily understand each project's viability, as well as, utilizing to enable the conversion of many under performing buildings into more valuable assets.
Learn from existing successful conversion projects about what enabled their successes and then communicate this to Stakeholder Groups (cities, builders and building owners).
Provide more affordable housing for vunerable people
Goal #1
The Rethink 4 Walls program looks to accelerate the pace of retrofit activity across Canada given the social, economic and environmental benefits from increase housing stock, enable accessibility and equity for many underserved Canadians that want to live in our cities near the services and support they require.
Issues Rethink 4 Walls will be finding solutions for
The Statistics that matter...
Nominations
The Rethink 4 Walls Initiative
About our Team
RSI has selected a team of innovative thought leaders with retrofit experience in the real estate industry to manage this project. Our team is well versed in this space and will leverage their connections to engage the appropriate professionals needed to study, assess and understand the feasibility associated with the conversion of many properties into innovative and diverse housing solutions across Canada.
About the Challenges
While retrofit building rates have increased dramatically in Calgary with early successes and robustly in Ottawa and Halifax, national retrofit rates and activity in Canada remain low when compared to Europe and some US states. Our team strongly believes that more Canadian cities and building owners will deploy these conversions more often with more useful information to assess project viability faster and more effectively.
Timelines for this Initiative
June 2025 - create a report that
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assessed the retrofit environment within Canada
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identified resources and literature that shed light on current trends both in Canada and globally
June 2025 - Launch event Toronto
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Hosted an engaging panel discussion with industry and government particpants with experience and interest in advancing these conversions more often.
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Our team explained it thesis and goals for this intiative.
August 2026 - Start Stage 2 research and assessment
March 2027 - Release Report with finding and recommendations
April-June 2027 - Events to Present to Stakeholder groups
Sept 2027 - Start Stage 3 - Develop Roadmaps for developing different building types and use cases.
Join us - Get involved
Lets us know if you are interested in helping on this important initiative.
Innovation to enable Canada to provide more non-traditional housing in urban centres