Tenants face displacement after Vancouver Island RV park rents more than doubled. Globalnews.ca

Some long-time residents of a Vancouver Island RV park say they are being forced to move anywhere after its owners raised rents substantially.

Carolyn Lawson is one of more than a dozen tenants with Riverside RV & Camping in Couchon Valley on the Riverside lot.

Lawson said the new owners recently took over, with plans to use the riverside lot as a camping space. She said she was told her current rent — about $500 a month for the lot, water and electricity but no septic — would climb to about $1,200 per month.

With no space elsewhere in the park, she and other Riverside tenants are being forced to move out, she said.

“Having two pensions, I cannot even come close to him. That’s quite a shock. no warning. No written notice, no rent increase, it was just $1,200 or you would have to leave,” she said.

“It’s either like it or get out. So there are a lot of people who will be homeless because of this.”

2:25Growing support for people living in RVs in Vancouver

Stephen Lambert, who said he has been living in the park for the past two years, now faces homelessness.

Lambert said he lives on a fixed income of $1,050 per month, which means he can no longer afford to live.

“I’m 67 and I’m on a fixed income, and it’s all going to cost me more for storage. I’m basically on the road now, I’ll be living in my motor home,” he said.

Lambert said people can’t afford to sleep in their vehicles in nearby Duncan or North Couchen, or they risk hefty bylaw fines.

Park residents do not sign tenancy agreements, and technically pay a per-day fee. Lawson said he doesn’t know if they have any legal protections as tenants.

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District of North Couchon Mayor Al Sibring said his community and Duncan were working together to sympathetically address the issue of vehicle occupants, easing rules surrounding parking in places such as church parking lots. can.

He said the housing market in the area, as elsewhere in BC, is extremely tight.

“Maybe this situation is aggravated by that riverside campground situation. How exactly to deal with it, I don’t know,” he said.

“We have taken a very lax approach to enforcement; Our by-law enforcement is always motivated by complaints. And if we don’t get a complaint we don’t do anything. And if we get a complaint, we don’t write a ticket right away, we go and see the people.

The manager of Riverside RV & Campground declined to comment, and Global News was unable to reach the park’s owners.

Meanwhile, Lawson said he had an offer for a place to live in a camper somewhere to store the fifth wheel, but others are not so lucky.

“I’m 66, I don’t want to be in a camper,” she said.

“But there’s no compassion, nothing, just that way and you go out.”