Tenants face displacement after Vancouver Island RV park more than doubles rent

Some long-time residents of a Vancouver Island RV park say they’re being forced out with nowhere to go, after its owners hiked the rent substantially.

Carolyn Lawson is one of more than a dozen tenants with riverside lots at Riverside RV & Camping in the Cowichan Valley.

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

With no spaces open elsewhere in the park, she and other Riverside tenants are being forced out with nowhere to go, she said.

“Having two pensions there’s no way I can even come close to that. So quite a shock. No warning. No written notice, no rent increment, it was just $1,200 or you will 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.”

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Stephen Lambert, who said he’s lived at the park for the last two years, is now facing homelessness.

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

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

Lambert said people can’t risk sleeping in their vehicles in nearby Duncan or North Cowichan, or they risk hefty bylaw fines.

Residents in the park have not signed tenancy agreements, and technically pay a fee-per-day. Lawson said she doesn’t know if they have any legal protections as tenants.

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District of North Cowichan Mayor Al Siebring said his community and Duncan were working together on a way to compassionately address the issue of vehicle dwellers, which could lead to relaxed bylaws around parking in places like church parking lots.

He said the housing market in the area, as elsewhere in B.C., remains extremely tight.

“Probably this situation is going to be exacerbated by that Riverside campground situation. Exactly how to deal with it, I don’t know,” he said.

“We’ve taken a fairly lax approach to enforcement; our bylaw enforcement is always driven by complaints. And if we don’t get complaints we don’t do anything. And if we do get complaints we don’t automatically instantly write tickets, we go and see the people.”

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

In the meantime, Lawson said she’s had an offer for somewhere to store the fifth wheel she lives in and a place to stay in a camper for the time being, but that others aren’t so lucky.

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

“But there’s no compassion, nothing, just this is the way it is and out you go.”