Half a Million Dollars, Two Tenants: BC Housing’s SRO Math Exposed

The B.C. housing crisis has produced many bad numbers. This one deserves its own audit file: according to Global News, the province paid $547,100 over two months connected to operating and winding down Vancouver’s Colonial Hotel SRO while only two tenants remained.

Global reported that the Colonial is a 140-room single-room occupancy hotel that the B.C. government shut down because, according to the province, the owner was not maintaining it properly. The operator, Atira, had been managing the SRO. The province told Global that Atira received $3.9 million from BC Housing in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026.

That does not mean every dollar was “rent” for two people. Global’s reporting frames the money as government funding to operate and wind down a mostly vacant SRO. But that distinction makes the oversight question sharper, not softer: who at BC Housing approved this burn rate, what services were actually delivered, and why did it take a media report to put the numbers in front of taxpayers?

The public interest here is not whether the final tenants deserved safe shelter. They did. The issue is whether David Eby’s housing system can distinguish compassion from blank-cheque administration. If two vulnerable people need housing, the province should be able to protect them without keeping a mostly empty 140-room building on a six-figure monthly track.

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim called the spending “completely ridiculous” in Global’s follow-up report and questioned the lack of transparency. Global also reported comments from former tenants and BC Housing tenants who argued the money could have been put to better use. Those are claims and opinions from interviewees; the hard fact underneath is the province’s own funding figure.

Accountability before another cheque

B.C. taxpayers keep hearing there is not enough money: not enough for hospitals, not enough for long-term care, not enough for nurses, not enough for basic street-level order. Yet the housing bureaucracy could route more than half a million dollars through a mostly empty SRO and still leave the public guessing how the money was spent.

The NDP should not hide behind the word “complex.” Complex files require more transparency, not less. Publish the receipts. Name the approving authority. Explain the alternatives considered. And if this was defensible, show British Columbians the math.

Bottom line: when a government spends $547,100 around two tenants in a mostly vacant building, the scandal is not compassion. The scandal is a housing machine that spends first and explains later.