Six rooming houses in St. John’s operate as a last resort shelter for people experiencing homelessness. At this one, on Cookstown Road, a tenant was allegedly killed by a man staying at the shelter late last year. (Malone Mullin/CBC)

Sour-tasting hotdogs. Pizza Pockets and rotten eggs for breakfast. Locked laundry rooms. Puddles of urine on the floor.

All are among the complaints made to the Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corporation in the last three years from tenants of the province’s for-profit shelter system: a smattering of rooming houses in St. John’s owned and operated by four companies.

The owners of