Housing hard to come by for tenants displaced by Windsor Hotel closure, rental advocates say

When Delia Bighetty, 44, was forced to pack up and move out of the Windsor Hotel, where she'd lived for more than four years, a team of advocates from the North End Community Renewal Corporation sprang into action and helped her find a new place to live.

"It happened suddenly and then boom there they were," she said.

Bighetty, who is now in a rooming house in North Point Douglas, was among at least 20 long-term residents who had just two weeks to find housing after the deteriorating 120-year-old downtown Winnipeg hotel was shuttered last month under a provincial health hazard order.

Advocates with the renewal corporation's tenant-landlord co-operation program, which has three staff members and aims to help renters better understand their rights, scrambled to support people who were displaced.

While they were able to help people like Bighetty, they say the situation highlights just how few affordable, low-barrier housing options are available to people in the community who need support.

"You're dealing with a vulnerable population that is already continually being traumatized, and now we're just scattering them into the streets," said Mandolyn Jonasson, an advocate with the tenant-landlord program.

"Yes, some people were housed. Yes, some people are not housed. Some people had options for housing that they didn't think was suitable, and that's where we're at." 

Tenants were paying $400 to $450 a month for a room at the Windsor, Jonasson said. Bighetty told CBC she now pays $600 a month at the rooming house.

Lindsay Schaitel, lead co-ordinator of the tenant-landlord co-operation program, said a single person renting in the private market who receives employment and income assistance may get $600 to $691 for rent, depending on their personal situation.

In 2022, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Winnipeg was $1,350 per month — a 1.5 per cent increase from the year before, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's latest annual report. During the same period, Winnipeg's vacancy rate declined from 5.1 to to 2.7 per cent, the report says.

"The rents are going up so much in the private market … those that are on low income can't afford it," Schaitel said.

Tenants at the Windsor were initially told they had three months to move out, after the property was sold earlier this year, she said. But when the province deemed the building unsafe following an inspection, they were given a week to move out.

When they realized there was no way they would be able to get people housed so quickly, Schaitel's team pushed for a one-week extension from the province, she said.

"That gave us time to work with our other partners to actually rehouse the majority of the people," said Schaitel.