Cruise ship hired to help ease boom-town Kitimat’s housing crunch for flood of workers

Resource boom towns are notoriously costly places to hang your hat, especially when it comes to housing.

Kitimat, B.C., is just such a town. Workers are flooding in to help with Rio Tinto's massive aluminium smelter upgrade, while others are expected to work on planned liquified natural-gas facilities and the export terminal for the contentious Northern Gateway oilsands pipeline.

Rental vacancy rates have plummeted while rents have soared, according to District of Kitimat statistics. Anti-poverty activists are complaining landlords are conducting "renovictions" on their properties so they can jack up rents for the well-paid newcomers, CBC News reported last week.

But Rio Tinto Alcan has found a novel way to skirt the problem for hundreds coming in to work on its $2.7-million smelter project. The international mineral giant is bringing in a cruise ship that can house up to 600 workers.

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The Silja Festival, a cruise ferry that normally operates on the Baltic Sea between Stockholm, Sweden and Riga, Latvia, has arrived in Vancouver for a refit to turn it into a "flotel" that will be moored on Kitimat's waterfront, the Vancouver Province reports. The ship is being rechristened the Delta Spirit Lodge.

“We have spent the last 40 days travelling from the Baltic Sea, through the Panama Canal and up the West Coast,” Brian Grange, president of Bridgemans Services, told the Province. “We plan to use the next week to 10 days getting ready for the trip up to Kitimat.”

The B.C. company specializes in providing floating hotels and work camps for remote locations on the West Coast. Bridgemans' website said the Silja Festival will provide single-occupancy rooms with private bathrooms, 378-foot dining room, lunch room, three lounges, gym and other facilities.

Kitimat Mayor Joanne Monaghan told the Globe and Mail in January the housing situation in the once stagnant city of 9,000 is "desperate."

“We’ll probably have anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 workers in the long run,” she said. “The vacancy rate right now is .04 per cent.

“With the ship coming in, it will probably alleviate things a little bit because some of the [workers] are staying in the apartments and some of them are renting houses. They will probably go to the cruise ship now.”

Monaghan said the ship's new name for this assignment is a nod to history. The workers who came to Kitimat in the 1950s to build the original Alcan smelter were housed in a ship called the Delta King.

“It was an old paddle wheeler and that’s where a lot of the accommodations were," she told the Globe. "That ship is now in California as a restaurant."

[ Related: Kitimat residents to weigh in on Northern Gateway ]

Shipboard accommodation is a solution unique to coastal projects that isn't available to other boom towns such as Fort St. John, in northeastern B.C., or Fort McMurray, Alta.

The RCMP contracted three cruise ships as temporary housing for some of the 7,000 police officers who came from across Canada to work on the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games.

The vessels, leased from Holland America and Carnival Cruise Lines, were tied up in Vancouver harbour.

The project didn't go completely smoothly. It's original $57-million contract with Cruise Connections to provide the ships ended in a lawsuit after the Mounties cancelled the deal when the U.S. company delayed implementation over concerns it would be liable for paying Canadian taxes.

The company won a lawsuit against the RCMP awarding damages to Cruise Connections for breach of contract. A U.S. judge found the contract required the Mounties to pay all Canadian taxes, The Canadian Press reported.