'Everyone deserves to have a roof over their head': How some are turning to motels and campgrounds for housing

A busy thoroughfare in northwest Calgary features a strip of low-cost hotels, motels and lodges. Signs along 16th Avenue N.W. advertise their features: cable TV, free local calls and coin-operated laundry. One announces "Microwave and fridge on request."

Now there's something of a growing trend — guests renting by the month. 

Many owners in the Montgomery district aren't keen to talk about monthly stay rates with reporters, but they do offer up some basic details. Yes, it's happening more often than usual. In some cases, the owners say, tenants who can't find affordable rental options have been staying at these motels for months, or even years.

And it's not just motels people are turning to during an ongoing housing crisis that has gripped Calgary and the country. A campground roughly 40 kilometres east of the city, run by the Strathmore and District Agricultural Society, usually has about 30 full hookup spots booked for the winter out of its total of 45. This year, they're all occupied.

"It's not normal," said Ryan Schmidt, head of the Strathmore Agricultural Society. "Anecdotally, we've definitely heard from people that, you know, there's just no other options available to them. So they're trying to make it work in the campground."

According to the City of Calgary's most recent housing needs assessment, nearly one-fifth of Calgary households could not afford their housing in 2021. Given market housing conditions, the city said it expects 2023 numbers are even higher. 

In late October, a report published by the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy suggested more than 115,000 Calgarians are at high risk of homelessness. Calgary's rental vacancy rates, meanwhile, have reached near-decade lows.

At one motel in Calgary's north with dozens of suites, the owner gives the OK to knock on doors — if his establishment isn't mentioned by name. Behind one of those doors is Ashley Halas, 39.

She's been staying in the motel with her partner and her three pets for a little more than a year.

Halas and her partner struggled to find a rental at a price range they could afford, and competition for available, pet-friendly places has made the whole situation feel impossible.

"It's been very frustrating. I sometimes just stop looking," said Halas, who works in Calgary in a customer service role. "It's just a daily battle."

At the campground near Strathmore, Dan May and Leah Wheeldon live with their pug Sadie. They've been living at the campground in their 1977 Dodge Coachmen Leprechaun since September.

May commutes to work as a tire technician in Calgary, while Wheeldon is training to be a cook at a Strathmore restaurant. A year or so ago, they could afford renting a one-bedroom basement suite in Calgary for $950 a month. But after rents started to rise, they had a hard time finding another place, even after scaling down.

"We did run into an experience where we almost didn't get a place, and it was getting really hairy. Like, are we gonna have anywhere to live?" May said. "We were facing homelessness in, like, four days. And luckily, we grabbed a place the last second, but I didn't want to go through that again."