Earlier this month, about 35 residents of the City of Toronto-funded, YWCA-run Davenport Road Women’s Shelter at 348 Davenport Rd., south of Dupont Street, relocated to the former Days Inn at 1684 Queen St. E. In the end, roughly 45 women age 16 and up are expected to live at this location for about a year.
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Local Coun. Brad Bradford helped connect the property’s owner/developer, Queen Kingston Holdings Inc., with the City’s Shelter, Support and Housing Administration (SSHA) Division to negotiate a lease and get the building ready to welcome the women.
“This site was going to be sitting vacant as the developer/applicant goes through the approval process,” he said, adding he’s “happy to welcome the YWCA to the neighbourhood” and “by and large” the community has also been supportive of this endeavour.
“We saw this as an opportunity to make use of that space in a thoughtful way during the COVID-19 crisis in the city … It’s about ensuring we have safe homes, safe shelter for women who really need it now.”
At the end of April, an agreement was reached with the SSHA and the property’s owner/developer to lease the former hotel for about 14 months. Sanitation and pest control crews were brought in, a roofer and other trades people did some repairs, and the fire system was inspected to ensure everything was up to code. Arrangements were also made with the hotel operator to keep most of the furnishings and other necessary chattels.
“It was a team effort with the councillor, the City and us,” Developer Elliott Sud, president and CEO of The Sud Group, told toronto.com.
He said because of the COVID-19 crisis his team felt it was important to help the City, if they could, and decided to allow their unused property, which needs to be rezoned in order to be redeveloped into a condo, for shelter space.
Sud said they’ve received other requests to lease the former Days Inn, but they “purposely gave it to the City.”