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Nevertheless, public servants worked around the clock to meet the government’s arbitrary deadline of Dec. 31 and managed to reach the 10,000-refugee mark a couple of weeks later. But while it patted itself on the back — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bragged about it in Davos, to delegates overwhelmed by many hundreds of times that number — local agencies scrambled to find housing for them in tight markets such as Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver. The task proved so difficult, some requested a temporary halt on the intake of new arrivals.

COSTI Immigrant Services, which has been tasked with finding homes for families in Toronto, says the re-housing process is taking twice as long as usual, due to the rapid influx, as well as the fact that families are larger than anticipated and require hard-to-find three- and four-bedroom units. In the interim, thousands of refugees have been put up in hotels at the public’s expense — some, such as those in Vancouver, for a month or more — stuck in bureaucratic limbo while they wait to get their kids into school and enroll in English-language classes.

Predictably, some are getting restless. According to one volunteer working with government-sponsored refugees in Toronto, many families feel “trapped” in hotels and some would prefer to be back at the camps in Lebanon and Jordan. One Syrian mother, Zaneb Adri Abu-Rukti, told CBC her family has been in a hotel for 10 or 11 days, despite being told their stay would be only three or four days. “The problem is that we have kids and we would rather be outside in a settled house than sitting at a hotel,” she said.