Owner of Hobart’s old Royal Exchange Hotel makes unsolicited offer to help State Government deal with housing crisis

Community-minded Tasmanians, such as the owner of a hotel in Hobart’s CBD are making unsolicited offers to help the State Government as it grapples with a housing crisis.

Elaine Anderson owns the Royal Exchange and lives there with her son. She's offered the nine-bedroom hotel up to the government to help deal with the housing crisis and is awaiting a response. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

THE owner of the old Royal Exchange Hotel in the Hobart CBD has offered the historic building up as a potential short-term solution to the ongoing housing crisis.

Elaine Anderson has used the building, on the corner of Campbell and Bathurst Streets, as a private residence since 2006 but said she was willing to lease it to the Government to house people in acute need.

The old hotel boasts nine rooms and a commercial kitchen and Ms Anderson said it took up about half of the 512 sqm block, leaving space at the rear for further temporary accommodation to be erected.

“You could easily put a double bed in a couple of the rooms, plus a bunk bed,” she said.

“They’d probably have to spend a few bob on it but that shouldn’t be a problem.”

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Ms Anderson said she had not yet determined how much she would seek from the Government if it decided to use the hotel.

And hers is not the only unsolicited offer made to the government.

One Tasmanian man has begun a deal to secure 100 convertible shipping containers from Sydney at a cost of about $5.6 million — shipping included — and forwarded the details to the Department of Communities.

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