Purchase of entire buildings just one option being considered as refugees continue to place strain on housing and social services

The federal government is weighing options for dealing with the ongoing crisis in housing for refugee claimants, with Immigration Minister Marc Miller saying it might even purchase hotels to convert them into refugee housing centres as a way of cutting costs.

Miller recently told the Globe and Mail newspaper that a more affordable way to house people claiming refugee status would be to buy hotels and convert them. Such a plan might also include bringing front-line workers into the buildings to provide services to claimants while they wait for their cases to be processed.

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Figures from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada show that this year alone, Ottawa has paid for about 4,000 hotel rooms for 7,300 asylum seekers, many of them transferred from provincial shelters.

(While housing refugee claimants is a provincial responsibility, the federal government has been paying for hotels since the pandemic because of overloaded provincial shelters.)

Other figures show that in the 16 months between September 2021 and January 2023 Ottawa spent close to $94 million booking entire hotels to house asylum seekers. This included 10 hotels in Montreal and others in Niagara Falls and Ottawa. On average, asylum seekers spent 113 days in hotels at a cost of $208 per person per day, including meals and security.

Buying hotels isn’t the only option on the table for the housing crisis. Another is the creation of reception centres, like the one announced last fall for Peel Region in the Greater Toronto Area.

Kamal Khera, minister of diversity, inclusion and persons with disabilities, told the CBC in November that the reception centre will provide “streamlined” support and services to asylum seekers, offering up to five days of temporary shelter, legal aid, and help with health and social issues, with the support of community organizations. Ottawa provided $7 million in funding at the time. Once it’s running, the centre is expected to serve about 1,300 asylum claimants each month.

“We know that the surge in asylum seekers has particularly strained resources here in Ontario, especially in the Greater Toronto Area,” Khera said. “In response to that, we have both increased our engagement and our resources.”

Other money continues to flow from Ottawa. In January, Miller announced an additional $362.4 million in funding for the Interim Housing Assistance Program (IHAP) as part of the 2023-2024 fiscal year. IHAP provides funding to provincial and municipal governments, on a cost-sharing basis, to address extraordinary interim housing pressures resulting from increased numbers of asylum claimants. The new funding was in addition to the $212 million in national funding announced the previous summer.

And just last month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged $750 million to Quebec to help deal with the influx of refugee claimants that the province says has been putting a strain on housing, education and health care.

The funding is “to compensate Quebec for two fiscal years of costs they’ve incurred for the disproportionate flow of asylum seekers,” Miller said at the time. Last year, Quebec received 65 per cent of refugee claimants entering through official border crossings, and 95 per cent of those entering the country illegally.

Reference: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ottawa-hotels-asylum-seekers