Well it costs a ridiculous amount based on how we spent on housing refugees so do not think it's a effective solution based on limited resoruces.
If we turn defunct hotels or motels into housing that makes sense and I would support.
But just renting out dozens of room at a holiday inn is just lol.
If you give people better housing for free then most get by providing for themselves seems a bit unfair to me.
Ofc the city councilors wont raise property taxes to do this and expect other govt to pay to avoid political blowback.
The leasing of the entire hotels, which were largely empty due to Covid comes at a much lower price than the typical room rate.
Keep in mind as well that typical costs of running a homeless shelter are in the $90-100 per day range, so not exactly cheap either.
The proposed plan here is to buy the hotels that the City has been leasing, so as to save money and allow for useful renovations.
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As for the housing being better than what some get renting on their own................
Reality check, the City didn't lease the Royal York as a shelter.
We're talking about Days Inn/Bond Place etc.
B-List accommodation.
Good enough, but not many frills.
In the rare case where the facilities have some modest frills (a gym or a pool or such) you can be sure the City isn't operating them, and would remove any pool for sure in a renovation.
That what's left may be better than some rundown apartments in the City speaks to the need to upgrade those apartments and provide better incomes for many; not a need to find crappier housing.
The only real perk of this, if you want to call it that, is that most of these rooms do have air conditioning.
But in light of the recent heatwave I think that's a great thing.
Again, something that needs to be addressed with many older apartments.
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