A class of Grade 5 students in Toronto had the opportunity to pitch ideas to Mayor John Tory on how to solve the housing crisis in the city.

Back in November, Kalina Butts’ Grade 5 classroom at Northlea Elementary and Middle School in Leaside started researching places around the city to build new housing for homeless people and environmentally friendly products that could be used for these buildings.

Butts said her students were inspired after attending a fundraiser to help homeless people in Toronto and ever since then, they have been sharing their ideas. At one point, they even tweeted at the mayor asking him if he would listen to their presentation.

Scroll down to see the kids' projects

The students attended an architectural firm to get some inspiration then started researching vacant land through Google Earth and designing blueprints to show to the mayor.

Speaking with CTV News Toronto inside the school on Friday, Tory said the young students were full of great ideas that he promised to take back with him to City Hall.

“These kids, like most kids, now are engaged in the city – they care about other people and about their city – they care a lot about the environment so every one of their proposals has a lot of environmental sensitivity and they had some very clever ideas about building materials you could use that might be cheaper,” Tory said.

“You learn something every day and you can learn lots from listening to young people.”

Groups of students came greeted Tory with their projects in hand, ready to address this issue with the mayor himself.

“Our project is important because the people with no houses can have a home and more opportunities in life,” one of the students Peter said. “It is disrespectful that some people do not get homes to live.”

Tory said he agreed.

Peter and two other students explained to the mayor their plan to build a 50-storey highrise building for people in need of housing. They said their plans were both ecological and economical as they chose building materials that are less costly and better for the environment. One of their ideas included a solar powered roof on the building to source energy, which Tory said is now a requirement for new high-rise buildings coming to the city.

Another group of students proposed a 12-14 storey building for homeless people, which Tory said was a bit more realistic.

Tory told the group of students that it was nice to see kids who come from families with homes care about others in need.

“I grew up sort of like you, in a neighbourhood not far away from here and you don’t realize how lucky we are to grow up in neighbourhoods like that where most people have a home and most of the parents have a job so things are pretty good but there are other people in Toronto who haven’t been so fortunate,” he said.

After Tory answered questions from the students, Butts told CTV News Toronto that it was all the student’s creative efforts that brought in the mayor.

“We decided about a couple months ago and we were just trying to figure out how to get him here because I said ‘it’s your work – how do we get the mayor to come see it if the mayor needs to approve your plans’ and I said ‘I can do it but I’ll just be another email in his inbox’ so they decided to come up with a video,” she said.

The students then put together a video and Butts posted it to Twitter inviting Tory to visit their classroom.

About a week later, Tory responded accepting their invitation and then showed up in their classroom three days later.

Here are samples of the student's work presented to Mayor John Tory: