John van Nostrand

Senior Director & Founder

John is the founder of Two Steps Home, and the Founding Partner of SvN Architects + Planners (now WW+P in Toronto). Since 1978, he has been the driving force behind the firm’s integrated architectural, planning, landscape, and urban design practice. Over the past 40 years, he has focused on housing for all incomes, land settlement, and infrastructure in cities and landscapes undergoing constant growth and renewal. He served as Chair of the Boards of the Home First Society and Houselink Community Homes in their early days. In 2018, he created Parcel Developments to focus on evolutionary housing and its application to entry-level housing for all incomes. Most recently, John created Two Steps Home to address homelessness more directly.

Sheila Penny

Director, Secretary-Treasurer

Sheila Penny was appointed Chief Operating Officer of Toronto Community Housing (TCHC) in 2019. After 19 years with Toronto District School Board (TDSB), Sheila joined TCHC in 2013 as Vice President, Facilities Management. She is a highly experienced facilities executive, able to lead diverse teams to deliver all aspects of capital construction and facilities operations.

Sheila also had a highly successful career for 10 years in the private sector with Moriyama & Teshima Architects as an associate and senior architect, as well as 2 years in her own private practice, before joining the public sector.

Anna Dunets

Director, Capital Projects

Anna is a resettlement specialist and municipal engineer with over 30 years of international project experience. She has led a number of complex land acquisition, land use planning, impact assessment, and infrastructure planning projects, and brings to her work an intimate familiarity with both the stakeholder engagement and technical work streams required in successful resettlement and community building. She has worked with a broad range of private and public sector clients around the world, including the World Bank and the IFC in North America, Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean. Her particular specialty is in the planning, design and construction of new communities, with an emphasis on cost control and schedule. Anna has a Masters in Engineering and was inducted into the Engineering Hall of Distinction at the University of Toronto in 2013.

Larry Chookang

Advisor, Capital Projects

Larry is a project engineer and project manager with over 30 years of experience implementing capital projects. He built dozens of mobile tiny shelters with Khaleel Seivwright and others of Toronto Tiny Shelters to improve the physical, mental and emotional health and welfare and avoid deaths of homeless people living rough in Toronto outdoors and parks during Winter of 2020. He is a volunteer crew leader with Habitat For Humanity GTA, for personnel from companies and organizations to build homes at several sites in the Toronto area. He has worked with various NGOs overseas in Israel. Mali, Haiti, Cambodia, Mongolia, Guatemala. Larry also works with GlobalMedic and their Rapid Response Team.

Robert Raynor

Project Manager, BetterStreet

Robert is a designer, researcher, educator, and maker. Passionate about suitable and sustainable housing, he has a background in architecture, woodworking, life-cycle carbon thinking, and community engagement for chronically-unhoused populations. Robert was a carpenter with Khaleel Seivwright’s Toronto Tiny Shelters project from 2020-2021, helping build the majority of the 110 shelters and delivering them to parks with Khaleel. He holds a Masters of Architecture degree from the University of Toronto, and supports Two Steps Home through his work at BetterStreet.

Tony Stortz

Project Advisor, BetterStreet

Tony is the former Site Superintendent for A Better Tent City of Waterloo Region, one of the first tiny home communities in Canada. He has extensive government experience at the provincial and municipal levels, in street outreach work (as Outreach Coordinator for St. Mary's RC Church in Kitchener), and with non-profit organization development. Tony is the principle and founder of BetterStreet, working across Canada supporting the delivery and operations of transitional housing. He holds a B.A. in Commerce from the University of Guelph, and is the author of A Home of Their Own, currently writing a second book.