BC Housing’s Luugat Math: $101,000 in July for One Remaining SRO Tenant

BC Housing’s Luugat Hotel file has become a simple test of public-spending accountability: when the province misses a housing deadline, does anyone show taxpayers the bill before the meter keeps running?

Global News reports the Luugat, a former Howard Johnson on Vancouver’s Granville Strip converted into single-room occupancy housing, was supposed to be closed by June. But one resident, Ryan Donnelly, remained in the building in July and was still there when Global’s August 11 story aired. The Ministry of Housing told Global it cost $101,000 in July to house that one remaining resident.

That figure is not a policy abstraction. It is a monthly cost attached to one government-owned building, one remaining resident, one missed deadline, and one minister’s office that should be able to produce the invoice trail. Staffing, security, maintenance, relocation work, approvals, contractor payments and decision dates are not private mysteries when public money is being spent at this scale.

The background makes the number harder to dismiss. Global reported on July 1 that three residents remained after the June 30 deadline, and that the province had previously said all Luugat tenants would be moved by the end of June while also saying no one would be evicted without somewhere to go. In that July 1 report, Global said the province purchased the former hotel for $55 million in October 2020 to house people from encampments.

By July 15, Global reported the NDP government and BC Housing confirmed one resident was still at the Luugat more than two weeks after the deadline. Housing Minister Christine Boyle said staff were working one-on-one with tenants to find the right housing fit and that the ministry did not yet have a figure for what it was costing to keep the SRO open for one person.

Now the figure exists. Global reports Boyle was not made available for an interview for the August 11 story, and Vancouver Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung criticized the cost as far beyond market-rent alternatives.

The point is not to target a tenant with health or housing needs. It is to ask why the public system produced a six-figure July cost around one remaining placement after a closure deadline had already passed. A serious government can protect vulnerable people and still explain how $101,000 was authorized, who approved it, what alternatives were considered, and what date the remaining cost exposure ends.

BC Housing’s SRO ledger has now produced another plain-language accountability question: if this is the cost of compassion under the NDP’s management model, where are the receipts?