The former minister of housing is defending the money spent on those who successfully moved through Horizons 106 – the former Airport Comfort Inn.
Auditor General Denise Hanrahan says the average cost for the 34 people who successfully transitioned through the facility to permanent housing was $706,000 per person.
Fred Hutton, who is now in opposition, says there are 150 people who have gone through the transitional housing facility, 40 of whom have moved into full-time housing, and another 35 who left or dropped out of the program.
He says the people staying there had been homeless for four years or more with complex mental health and addictions issues, and applying accounting principles to those needs is wrong.
He compares it to breaking down the cost of someone going through cancer treatment. Hutton says the difference with Horizons 106 is that it didn’t serve just as a shelter; it also provided needed supports from nurses, doctors and counsellors.
The current government will not be renewing the lease on the former hotel property at the end of the year, but Minister Joedy Wall has offered assurances that all the supports will remain in place for those who need them.
NDP addresses former government’s ‘failure’
The NDP accuses the former Liberal government of creating transitional housing at Horizons 106 for show and without a plan.
Leader Jim Dinn claims the former government’s approach to the solution was “driven by optics instead of a real, coordinated plan to address homelessness.”
“I guess if anything else, it demonstrates how not to do housing, and I would say overall there was a lack of preparedness and a failure to address a problem that you could see coming for quite a ways.”
