From ‘drab to fab’: Egale Centre aims to make new LGBTQ housing facility a showcase

You wouldn’t have noticed it anyhow, but don’t look out for the buff brick, 1870s heritage home at 270 Dundas St. E. It’s been taken down and won’t be rebuilt until spring.

Formerly an underutilized Toronto Community Housing Corp. apartment with a sturdy, 1970s red-brick addition running south along Pembroke Street, the complex was the “epitome of drab,” architect Paul Dowsett says. “I like to think that we’re going from drab to fab.”

Yes, the new Egale Centre will indeed be fabulous when it opens toward the end of 2019, but, sadly, it may fill up quickly. The Egale Centre, you see, will be Canada’s first “specific housing facility” that welcomes homeless youth who identify as LGBTIQ2S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, queer, questioning and Two Spirit), executive director Helen Kennedy says.