The Province of BC, in partnership with BC Housing and local municipalities, has worked to secure and operate 686 hotel and community centre accommodations in Vancouver and 324 hotel spaces in Victoria. This allows people from the encampments to safely physically distance, with access to important health, social and other supports.

The Victorian Government has committed $20 million to pay for hotel rooms for healthcare workers who test positive to coronavirus or need to self-isolate while revealing “some wonderful success” in its COVID-19 strategy.

Health-care, pharmacy and grocery store employees and other front-line workers can stay at the Accent Inn if they don’t want to put their families at risk during the pandemic.

Accent Inns announced that it would discount its rooms to $59 per night for those healthcare employees and the community stepped forward to cover the rest. Donations were made through the United Way Hotels for Frontline Workers Fund and so far $62,000 has been raised. That’s covered a total of 940 nights in Accent Inns hotels for 118 essential frontline workers in Kelowna, Kamloops, Victoria, Burnaby and Richmond

Several Niagara hotels — business has been decimated due to the coronavirus — are offering rooms to health-care workers who want to isolate themselves as the battle to curb the global pandemic continues. “Health-care workers who may, through their job, be exposed to COVID-19, don’t want to go back to their families and risk infection,” said Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati, who has reached out to the hotel industry.

Homeless people who have tested positive for COVID-19 or are suspected of being positive will be able to go into isolation at a local Calgary hotel. The hotel is not being identified for privacy reasons and no longer accepts paying customers.

Toronto Councillor Joe Cressy said five hotels have been acquired with another five in the process of being secured. Two vacant rental buildings are also in the process of being acquired and 50 permanent housing units have been identified. He added that 19 households have secured permanent housing. The latest acquisitions are in addition to the nine existing sites the city has already opened to facilitate social distancing within the shelter system. Cressy added that the city has provided funding to five community partners that run overnight programs to stay open all day to provide daytime spaces for those experiencing homelessness. Two sites are now open and three others will open shortly.