Resources

Design Toolkit

The Women-Centred Housing Design Toolkit is a free downloadable PDF document to help you implement the women-centred spatial design principles, strategies, and actions and develop long-term housing for women and their children/dependents with experiences of violence.

From Knowledge to Action: 

Lessons Learned in the Practical Application of Women-Centred Housing Design

The Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation (CMHC) selected the Women-Centred Housing Design Toolkit as the recipient of the 2024 Gold Roof Award under the National Housing Strategy. The award supported the development of The From Knowledge to Action Report, a free, downloadable PDF document that walks you through how three case sites are practically applying women-centred housing design principles across BC. Included are themes and recommendations which were informed by consultations with women with lived experience of violence as well as the staff teams and management at the three case study sites. Thank you to CMHC for supporting this work.

Recommended Resources

The following resources are a list of design guidelines and toolkits that we recommend for further readings. Many of these resources provide sets of design recommendations to inform designing and building housing through a gender-sensitive and trauma-informed approach.

A Design Guide for Older Women’s Housing (Donnelly et al., 2022)

Using research findings and insights, this guide provides design responses and recommendations to housing developers and designers to support the development and construction of quality, affordable housing for older women at risk of homelessness.

Architectural Principles in the Service of Trauma-Informed Design (Grabowska et al., 2021)

This pamphlet focuses on the ways to design a building to support a therapeutic approach. It offers design principles towards trauma-informed architecture and presents annotated spaces and examples to visualize the principles.

BC Housing Design Guidelines and Construction Standards (BC Housing, 2019)

This document provides standards and technical guidelines for the design and construction of new buildings, conversions and renovation projects funded and financed by BC Housing.

BC Housing Design Guidelines For Women’s Safe Homes, Transition Houses, Second Stage Housing, and Long-Term Rental Housing (BC Housing, 2021)

This guide includes design recommendations to assist development teams with the planning, and design processes for upgrading existing buildings or constructing new buildings that are to be used for the women safe homes, transition houses, second stage housing and long-term rental housing.

Women-Centred Housing Design Toolkit Webinar

APRIL 2023

We participated in a live webinar presenting our journey with the toolkit, and how it can be used by members to enhance quality and suitability of long-term housing for women, and their children and dependants.