Carver Place: A neighbourhood-scale deep retrofit

The Carver Place project offers an achievable vision for social housing: deep retrofits delivered at the scale of an entire community—improving comfort for residents, reducing operating pressures for housing providers, and cutting emissions for the region.

This multi-phase retrofit and research initiative is a collaboration between EnviroCentre’s Retrofit Accelerator program and the MultiFaith Housing Initiative, which manages the Carver Place townhomes in Ottawa.

The problem:
Aging infrastructure, compounding pressures

Carver Place is a 63-unit social housing community in Ottawa’s east end.

Like many developments of its era, the buildings were showing clear signs of age: mechanical systems nearing failure, rising energy usage, and homes that were becoming increasingly expensive to maintain.

In 2025, the MultiFaith Housing Initiative reached out to EnviroCentre with what seemed like a contained issue: a handful of furnaces at Carver Place needed replacement. But the underlying challenge was far broader. Across Eastern Ontario, more than 33,800 social housing units face similar conditions. Aging roofs, drafty envelopes, outdated mechanical equipment, and growing climate stresses are converging at once—while housing providers navigate limited staffing capacity, tight budgets, and no straightforward way to deliver deep retrofits at scale.

Replacing a few furnaces would address an urgent need. It would not, however, make the homes more comfortable, resilient, or affordable to operate over the long term. EnviroCentre recognized an opportunity to support the housing provider in a more strategic way.

The solution:
A neighbourhood-scale deep retrofit

Instead of a like-for-like equipment swap, EnviroCentre proposed a community-wide deep retrofit through the Retrofit Accelerator—a structured approach that allows housing providers to upgrade entire neighbourhoods at one time by optimizing capital investments and funding and incentives available.

Phase 1: Retrofit delivery

Work began with a detailed audit of Carver Place’s buildings and energy systems to assess the most effective measures to improve performance and comfort.

The retrofit, completed in summer 2025, focused on strengthening both the building envelope and mechanical systems. Upgrades included:

• Cold-climate, air-source heat pumps
• Energy recovery ventilation (ERV) systems
• Building envelope improvements, including new insulation and air sealing

Maintaining stability for residents was a central priority. To ensure tenants could remain in their homes throughout construction, installations were carried out in carefully planned phases. This sequencing reduced disruption to daily routines and allowed EnviroCentre to keep residents informed and engaged as the work progressed.

The project’s scale also brought a practical advantage: contractors were able to source equipment and materials in bulk, significantly reducing per-unit costs and ensuring consistency across all 63 homes.

Phase 2: Research and monitoring

A key component of the initiative is the research partnership with:

• Carleton University’s Centre for Advanced Building Envelope Research (CABER)
• McGill University’s ReCONstruct Initiative

Beginning in summer 2025 and continuing through summer 2026, researchers are tracking how the retrofits perform in real-world conditions. Sensors installed in select homes measure indoor temperature, humidity, and CO₂ levels. McGill’s team is examining residents’ lived experience—changes in comfort, ease of heating and cooling, and potential links to health and well-being.

Together, these insights will deepen understanding of community-scale retrofit impacts and help guide future projects.

What our partners said

“EnviroCentre came in with a subject matter expertise that made the whole process easier. They coordinated the schedule, the contractors, the installers—it was all from their own portfolio. This project created a completely improved building, improving residents’ comfort and reducing calls to our maintenance team”

–Olu Ademeso, Facilities and Project Manager at Multifaith Housing Initiative

The impact:
Early outcomes and long-term potential

Full post-retrofit results will be available in 2026, but early energy modeling points to substantial improvements:

• 43% reduction in total energy use
• 95% reduction in natural gas consumption
• 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions

One immediate benefit was the introduction of air conditioning through heat pump systems—an important resilience upgrade for tenants who are more vulnerable to extreme heat and associated health risks.

Beyond the numbers, the Carver Place project demonstrates the value of a coordinated, portfolio-minded approach. By treating a community as a unified system rather than a collection of individual units, our Retrofit Accelerator helps housing providers unlock deeper energy savings, improve resident comfort, and stabilize long-term operating costs.

The model is replicable, scalable, and designed for the realities of social housing providers navigating limited resources and aging building stock.

Curious to learn more about the process?