Darron Kloster
Times Colonist
Hotel being used to house people who used to live on streets and in the bush; hospital wants to buy it to house staff
On Salt Spring Island, where housing has always been scarce, a small, aging hotel is at the centre of a crisis.
Salt Spring Island Community Services desperately needs the 18-room Seabreeze Inne to continue housing the 20 vulnerable people who came out of tents in the bush and off the streets during the pandemic.
But the Island’s only hospital, Lady Minto, wants the Seabreeze to house its staff, as it struggles to fill 31 vacant positions — everything from cleaning staff and cooks to technicians and nurses — on an island where vacant housing is “simply non-existent.”
