Indigenous Youth Housing Futures —CMHC Research Collaboration

Apiary X is proud to be part of a cross-functional consortium responding to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) Request for Information (RFI) on housing research and innovation. This collaboration, operating under the auspices of the Office for Responsive Environments (ORE), brings together leaders in Indigenous housing, youth resilience, architecture, planning, and technology to shape new solutions for some of Canada’s most pressing housing challenges.

At the core of this initiative is a shared vision: to reimagine housing for Indigenous youth and at-risk populations as more than shelter — as spaces of regeneration, resilience, and cultural belonging.

The Consortium

• M-ReGen (Myengun Den ReGeneration)
  Led by Michael Myengun Amos, M-ReGen contributes over a decade of experience in Indigenous housing advocacy and youth engagement. With deep ties to Toronto institutions such as the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto (NCCT), Michael ensures the project is grounded in community trust, cultural safety, and lived experience.
  

• Brown and Storey Architects Inc.
  A prestigious Toronto architecture and urban design firm, Brown and Storey, have shaped many of the city’s most high-profile civic and cultural projects — from public realm transformations to innovative urban design frameworks. Through the Office for Responsive Environments (ORE), their work explores architecture, landscape, planning, and Indigenous planning in ways that reconnect built form with social and ecological systems. Their expertise in housing forms, courtyards, and resilient urban design provides the architectural and planning backbone of the consortium.
  

• Stack Aspect / Ian Penney
  As Lead Technologist, Ian contributes over 25 years of IT and security leadership experience. His role focuses on building digital infrastructure for collaboration, data analysis, and community engagement — from web presence to mapping tools, dashboards, and evaluation frameworks that make the consortium’s work transparent, scalable, and funder-ready.

Focus Areas

The consortium’s work with CMHC is aligned with several of the Corporation’s priority research areas, including:

• Housing Needs: Understanding the unique housing challenges faced by Indigenous youth, including coping strategies and long-term outcomes.

• Housing Supply & Demand: Exploring scalable, community-based models for low- and mid-rise high-density housing that balance affordability with resilience.

• Building Innovation: Investigating “subtraction” as an active form of urban transformation, where deteriorated or obsolete buildings can be reabsorbed into new community-oriented housing forms.

• Indigenous and Northern Housing: Addressing systemic barriers to Indigenous housing and homeownership in urban contexts, with approaches that blend cultural spaces, courtyards, and collective forms as overlooked but vital strategies for resilience.

Why It Matters

This project is more than research. It is about creating actionable pathways to improve Canada’s housing systems. By combining the voices of Indigenous leaders, the vision of world-class architects, the foresight of planners, and the power of technology, the consortium is working to translate research into real, community-driven housing strategies.

Through this collaboration, Apiary X, M-ReGen, and its partners in the ORE aim to deliver insights and prototypes that can inform not only CMHC’s agenda, but also the broader ecosystem of funders, municipalities, and community organizations committed to housing equity and Indigenous youth futures.