Standing on the corner of Columbia and Cordova streets, Elaine Shepherd speaks out about being suddenly evicted from her single-occupancy room at the Balmoral Hotel.
With April’s rent paid in full, she came home one day mid-month and discovered she’d been locked out of her room for no apparent reason.
“They didn’t give me any notice … they just locked me out.”
With no money for alternative shelter, Shepherd ended up on the streets. And she isn’t the only one finding rentals are too pricey. A report released yesterday by the Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP) found only 12 per cent of 3,500 hotel rooms in the DTES are affordable to low-income people. This is down 17 per cent from 2009.
“More than half of all the privately owned rooms rent for over $425 a month, $50 more than a person on (social assistance) can afford,” said one of the report’s co-authors, Wendy Pedersen.
