Hotel owners are worried about safety risks to their staff and potential damage to their properties if the B.C. government heeds a call by Victoria council to requisition hotel and motel rooms for people without homes during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Bill Lewis, who chairs the Hotel Association of Greater Victoria, said his colleagues are sympathetic to the situation in Victoria and the ongoing effort to find homes for hundreds of people now living in tents on Pandora Avenue and in Topaz Park.

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He noted that some hoteliers are already leasing space voluntarily to B.C. Housing, and he said the association supports that process.

“But in terms of requisitioning or forcing hotels, we don’t believe that it’s a solution to be forced on us,” he said.

For one thing, the association questions whether a traditional hotel setting is the right place for people without homes, given the extensive health and social supports many of them will require.

Safety and security of staff is also a concern, he said. “We’re not in the nature of dealing with that clientele.”

As well, many hotels and motels are still open and trying to generate revenue from essential travel in order to keep people employed, he said. “We don’t believe that forcing homeless people into hotel rooms, in hotels that are open to the public, is a solution or a viable solution for both the homeless people and the safety and security of the staff and the buildings themselves.”

Ingrid Jarrett, president of the B.C. Hotel Association, endorsed the position taken by hoteliers in Greater Victoria.

The associations responded Thursday after Victoria council passed a motion urging the provincial government to use its emergency powers to requisition empty motel and hotel rooms for people without homes. Failing that, the city wants the power to declare a local state of emergency, so it can requisition the rooms.

Mayor Lisa Helps, who authored the motion with councillors Sarah Potts and Jeremy Loveday, said the city has “hit a wall” after working with B.C. Housing and Island Health for the past month in an effort to move people indoors in order to prevent the virus from sweeping through an already vulnerable street community.

Nearly 200 rooms have been secured to date, but hundreds more are needed, and Helps said many hotel and motel owners have been reluctant to participate.

She acknowledged the concerns of hoteliers, but said that’s why the proper health and mental supports would have to be in place before people move into the rooms.

“What won’t work is taking people from Pandora and Topaz and just putting them in the Empress,” Helps said. “What will work is taking people from Topaz and Pandora and putting them inside the Empress or whatever other hotel with fair compensation to hotel owners [and] with a guarantee the properties will be returned in conditions in which they were leased, and most importantly with health-care supports for people who are moving in.”

Coun. Geoff Young opposed council’s motion, arguing that previous efforts to move people off the street have led to problems, even in buildings that were managed and staffed at significant cost.

“As a result, many of those rooms were left empty, simply because the people who were living in them were not able to manage their own affairs in a way that was reasonable.”

Young said there are additional concerns about the impact on surrounding neighbourhoods. “And we know from the communications we’ve had over years that we’re way short of achieving that level of management.”

Loveday, however, said emergency measures are needed to prevent the kinds of outbreaks that have hit vulnerable people in shelters or on the street in cities across North America.

“The fact is right now, we’re not all in this together,” he said. “We’re telling people to stay home, but many in our community can’t stay home because they don’t have a home to stay in.

“We’re saying wash your hands all the time, keep physical distance. But then there’s people in our community who don’t have access to sanitation services, and don’t have the ability to physically get distance from others in the community.”

B.C. Housing has said that it’s continuing to negotiate with motels and hotels to secure more rooms and expects to finalize additional contracts in the coming weeks. As well, the government agency is trying to find a site for an emergency-response centre that will provide more spaces.

lkines@timescolonist.com