Employees of the Comfort Inn and Suites in Victoria are spending a stressful long weekend trying to figure whether they still have jobs.
Ryan Smith, the hotel’s food and beverage manager, said employees were blindsided by news Friday that the B.C. government had purchased the hotel at 3020 Blanshard St. for $18.5 million to house 65 people from the homeless camps at Topaz Park and Pandora Avenue.
Smith said he and other workers learned of the sale through news reports and have since received only vague responses from B.C. Housing about what that means for their futures.
There were more than 100 people on the payroll when the hotel began laying off staff due to the COVID-19 outbreak in March, he said.
“They sent us a request to have our employee information transferred over to B.C. Housing,” he said. “They have not responded to my questions asking what that entails.”
B.C. Housing confirmed in a statement that its human resources department has reached out to the Comfort Inn’s employees and is discussing options with them. “B.C. Housing is looking forward to bringing many of these workers on as part of our team — they have skills that we’re looking for to help run these temporary accommodations,” the statement said.
But Smith said the jobs and working conditions will be far different from the ones employees left in March. “I don’t know what they’re really expecting from a bunch of hospitality workers, you know cooks, dishwashers, servers,” he said. “We’re not equipped to deal with that. That’s not our line of profession.
“I’m not passing judgment on the people who are moving in, or anything like that; it’s just not what we signed up for. It’s not our jobs, so when they say that they are offering our jobs back, they’re offering work, but not our jobs in our fields. How do you expect a 19-year-old server to be equipped to deal with people with those type of setbacks in life? It’s not viable.”
Smith said it’s also unclear whether employees will lose their COVID emergency response benefits if they decline to return to jobs that have changed dramatically since the shutdown. “In theory, we are facing not having our jobs to return to and being cut off of the benefits that are paying our rent, paying our mortgages, keeping food on the tables for our families,” he said. “It’s absurd.”
Clayton Rourke, a kitchen supervisor, said the stress of being laid off during the pandemic has been magnified by the hotel’s sale and the potential loss of benefits if he refuses temporary work at the new shelter.
“We’re pretty much forced to take this job, that’s a temporary job that we’re not really qualified for,” he said. “I just don’t know what to do, to be honest.”
Adding to the uncertainty, Rourke said B.C. Housing has offered little information and hasn’t responded to his calls.
“We got the offer, but it didn't really have any details,” he said. “It didn’t have a wage. It didn’t have job description. It didn’t have anything. They’re just saying: ‘Are you willing to work for us?’ We could be doing anything.”
Smith and Rourke said employees are scrambling to get answers, but it’s a difficult situation with the government and lawyers’ offices closed for three days.
“The hard part for us is there’s no one really to talk to, because it’s the long weekend,” Smith said.
The province ordered the evacuation of the homeless camps last month to protect people amid two public health emergencies — the COVID-19 outbreak and the ongoing drug-overdose crisis.
With the purchase of the Comfort Inn, the province has acquired about 440 rooms at hotels, motels and other facilities in Victoria, including 45 spaces at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
B.C. Housing says 234 of 360 people had moved from the camps into those spaces as of 4 p.m. Friday.
Social Development Minister Shane Simpson said more are expected to begin transitioning to the Comfort Inn across from Topaz Park in the coming days.
B.C. Housing will partner with Our Place Society to operate the former hotel and make sure people receive meals, health-care services, addictions treatment and harm reduction, and storage for personal belongings. Staff will be on site 24 hours a day to provide security for residents and the neighbourhood.
Simpson said the long-term plan is to redevelop the site to create affordable housing.
