It happened in Manhattan under former leftist mayor Bill DiBiaso and continues to occur in Toronto under the current mayor John Tory.
I’m referring to a short-sighted and disastrous policy of putting homeless with addictions and mental issues in tiny hotels left empty during Covid.
In Toronto, the hotel shelter policy was only supposed to be a stopgap measure to provide accommodation to the homeless occupying downtown parks.
But many leases with hoteliers – happy to make a quick and steady buck – have been extended two and three times.
One of the most disastrous has been the Novotel hotel, owned by the Vancouver-based Silver Hotel Group, a shelter which opened in February 2021 under secretive circumstances and which has wreaked havoc on the Esplanade neighbourhood.
