N.L. says all 45 Horizons at 106 residents will get placements, but gives no exit cost for the $24M hotel lease

Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation (NLHC) says all 45 people living at Horizons at 106 in St. John’s are being offered a placement in one of three new programs before the site closes, but it has not said what it will pay to leave the building or which of the Auditor General’s 11 recommendations it has finished.

The answers came in a written reply on Nov. 9 from Nancy J. Walsh, NLHC’s media relations manager, to questions Canada News Media sent on Nov. 4. The government announced on Oct. 23 that Horizons, the transitional supportive living site at 106 Airport Road, will close when its lease ends on Dec. 31, 2026.

What NLHC said

NLHC said all 45 residents “are being offered placements in one of the three programs that are being established to accommodate them.” The corporation pointed to a news release it issued the same day with details of the light-touch model, the third program, which is posted at gov.nl.ca.

On exit costs, NLHC said the costs of restoration and repairs “were captured under the lease agreement with the owner,” and that the specifics of the smoking shelter “will be negotiated with the owner.” On results, it said the measurement of outcomes “will be captured under the service agreements with operators, and will be communicated as appropriate.”

NLHC also said it accepted all 11 recommendations in the Auditor General’s May 2026 report, “many of which pertained to procurement practices,” and that it “will implement these changes when we do such procurements in the future, as we did with the recent RFPs to replace the supportive and transitional housing offered at Horizons.”

What NLHC did not say

The reply gave no dollar figure for what NLHC expects to pay to exit the lease, and no estimate for the restoration, repairs or smoking shelter. It did not say how many of the 45 residents have a confirmed place today or where the rest will go, and it did not give the status or expected cost of the 30-place light-touch request for proposals that was still under review on Oct. 23. It did not say which of the 11 recommendations are complete, or when the rest will be. It did not say whether outcome results will be published.

What the Auditor General found

The Auditor General’s May 2026 audit of the Transitional Supportive Living Initiative reported that about $24 million was spent from Feb. 15, 2024 to Dec. 31, 2025 (Table 1 total $24,004,357, including $13,056,089 in rent and $6,441,888 in operator grants), compared with about $13.8 million publicly disclosed. It found that 34 people moved to permanent housing, about $706,000 for each, and that 30 of the 105 rooms allotted went unused, at a cost of $1.5 million a year, a vacancy rate of 29 per cent. It also reported that the lease was awarded without an open call, under a procurement exemption, and that restoration fees of $681,187 and repairs of $16,871 were among the costs. NLHC’s response in the report’s appendix for each of the 11 recommendations reads: “The Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation accepts this recommendation.” No target dates are stated.

The Oct. 23 government release said 45 residents were living at Horizons, that Stella’s Circle (25 people, about $1.3 million a year) and Bensaid Services (20 people, about $2.2 million a year) had been selected for three-year agreements, and that $14.5 million was spent operating Horizons in 2025-26.

The wider picture

A separate Auditor General audit of NLHC’s social housing inventory, released in March 2026, found the waitlist grew 71 per cent from 1,523 to 2,603 households between April 1, 2021 and June 30, 2025, and that 222 of NLHC’s own units were vacant at the end of June 2025. NLHC accepted all 14 recommendations in that report as well.

What it means for you

Horizons was paid for by provincial taxpayers, and the remaining costs of leaving the lease, including any cost for the smoking shelter, have not been made public. Anyone can ask NLHC for the lease agreement through an access to information request under the province’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, 2015.

How we did this

We read the Auditor General’s two reports in full and compared their figures with the government’s Aug. 14 and Oct. 23, 2026 releases. We emailed NLHC five specific questions on Nov. 4 with a deadline of Monday, Nov. 9 at 5 p.m. ET. NLHC replied at about 3:44 p.m. ET on Nov. 9, before the deadline. Quotes above are from that reply. Figures are from the audit reports linked in this story. The photo is a file photo of downtown St. John’s and does not show Horizons at 106.