Affordable Housing...stop the insanity

Ward 13 · Accountability Ledger

The Hotel Ledger: What $29 Million a Year Buys — and Doesn't

Ottawa's homelessness budget keeps flowing into motel rooms. A look at why the expense/asset line, not the non-profit/for-profit label, is the number that actually explains why housing stays unaffordable in Rideau-Rockcliffe and across the city.

PETER KARWACKI WARD 13 CANDIDATE JULY 2026

A city can spend money two ways: as an expense that disappears, or as an investment that remains an asset. Ottawa's homelessness spending is a case study in the difference — and it explains, better than any abstract debate about margins, why the delivery model behind a housing unit matters as much as the unit itself.

01 The expense

In 2025, the City of Ottawa spent roughly $29.3 million housing homeless families in hotels and motels. That's not a one-time cost — it recurs every year the underlying shortage persists. Families placed this way stayed in shelter an average of 11 months, and about three in four were in overflow hotel and motel rooms rather than a dedicated shelter facility.

600+families in Ottawa's shelter system last year

11 moaverage family stay in shelter

76%of families in hotel/motel overflow, not dedicated shelter

16,000+households on the social housing waitlist, end of 2025

02 The asset

Compare that recurring bill to a single capital decision the City made this year: buying a vacant downtown hotel at 377 O'Connor St. for $45 million — with the federal government covering most of the cost — to convert into permanent transitional housing. It is, city staff said plainly, a better use of a building than parking families in motel rooms indefinitely.

Put those two numbers side by side and the ledger logic writes itself: at roughly $29 million a year, the City's motel spending would buy the equivalent of an O'Connor-St-sized asset every 18 months — except it buys nothing that lasts. One is an expense line. The other is a capital line. Only one of them still exists in five years.

Fig. 1 — Annual expense vs. one-time capital asset

2025 hotel/motel placements (recurring, annual)$29.3M / yr

377 O'Connor St. purchase (one-time, permanent asset)$45.0M once

Years of hotel spend to equal one asset purchase≈ 1.5 yrs

03 Why the delivery model is the actual variable

This is where the non-profit vs. for-profit distinction earns its place, rather than being a slogan. A for-profit developer's project has to clear a required return before it gets built at all — that return comes out of rent, permanently. A non-profit or co-op provider's project only has to cover its debt service, operating costs, and reserve fund. Break-even, not return-on-equity. That's the entire reason rent-geared-to-income housing — capped at 30% of a household's income — exists almost exclusively in the non-profit, co-op, and public sector in this city: no for-profit landlord will run a unit at a permanent loss relative to market rent.

The motel bill isn't a failure of the private market to be generous. It's what happens when a city relies on emergency, market-rate purchasing instead of financing the non-profit and public stock that doesn't need a margin to operate.

04 The supply gap behind the bill

The deeper problem is that Ottawa isn't building permanent stock fast enough to stop needing motels in the first place. The city's target was 5,000 new affordable units between 2021 and 2030. In the first three years, 466 were completed. The city's own auditor general estimated it would take roughly $188.4 million in additional city investment and another $376.7 million in federal and provincial funding to close that gap — money that competes, year over year, with the same budget paying the hotel bill.

Fig. 2 — 2021–2030 affordable housing target vs. units delivered so far

05 What this means for Ward 13

Rideau-Rockcliffe residents who list housing affordability as a top concern are, in effect, pointing at this same ledger. The fix isn't a slogan about "non-profits vs. developers" — it's structural: capital committed early enough, and predictably enough, that non-profit and co-op providers can secure their financing before a family spends another eleven months in a hotel room the city is paying for by the night. That's an accountability question, not just a compassion question — and it belongs in how this ward's councillor scrutinizes the housing capital budget every single year.

References

1. City of Ottawa. "New strategy helps families experiencing homelessness move more quickly into stable housing." Ottawa.ca newsroom, 2026. ottawa.ca
2. CBC News. "This single mom and her family have been living in Ottawa hotels for over a year." May 2026. cbc.ca
3. CBC News. "City forges new plan to house Ottawa's homeless families." April 22, 2026. cbc.ca
4. CBC News. "City poised to buy vacant downtown hotel to house families." Feb–March 2026. cbc.ca
5. City of Ottawa. "Facts at a glance — Subsidized housing." ottawa.ca
6. Ottawa Citizen (Pressreader). "The Affordable Housing Conundrum." March 30, 2024. pressreader.com
7. City of Ottawa. "Programs and incentives — Building affordable and supportive housing." ottawa.ca

Peter Karwacki for Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe) · peterkarwacki.blogspot.com