About 100 long-term residents at a Surrey, B.C., RV park are facing eviction and homelessness after the park’s owner announced plans to close the site in November.
Residents of Tynehead RV Camp on 102 Avenue, many of them seniors, say they are worried about where they will live once the park closes.
Serge Gendron, 80, has lived in his trailer at Tynehead since 1997.
“This is home, I’ve got no other place to go,” Gendron told CBC News.
He says he received a notice from the landlord in June, informing him that the park would be shutting down and that electricity and water services would be cut off in November.
“I couldn’t believe that I was getting a notice like this,” the senior said.
With assistance of a legal advocate, Gendron filed a dispute with the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB). The RTB ruled that he qualifies as a tenant under B.C.’s Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act (MHPTA) and found the landlord’s eviction notice to be non-compliant with the law.
In 2018, the provincial government strengthened tenant protections under the MHPTA, offering greater compensation to residents of manufactured home parks who face eviction due to park closures or conversions.
It’s something that other Tynehead residents are hoping to take advantage of.
Paul Lagace, a legal advocate and co-ordinator at the Prince Rupert Unemployed Action Centre who frequently works with people living in RVs, says the MHPTA mandates that landlords must provide at least 12 months’ notice when closing a park.
“He has a right to close the park under the act but there’s proper notices … [and] there’s a minimum $20,000 compensation for those folks,” he said, referring to the landlord.
A spokesperson for the province’s Housing Ministry said that landlords must pay additional compensation if manufactured homes cannot be relocated.
“Landlords, who give notice of a manufactured home park closure, but fail to proceed with the closure after eviction, must pay tenants 12 months’ pad rental, or $5,000, whichever is greater,” they said.
A copy of the notice from Tynehead RV Park owner Daniel Kuk, submitted by Lagace to CBC News, indicates that the landlord plans to close the park in order to retire and “travel all over Canada.”
Kuk declined an interview request from CBC News, but said his intention to close the park remains unchanged
Some residents at Surrey’s Tynehead RV Park say they are being forced to sign paperwork that would eliminate their rights as tenants, without which they would have to leave. The CBC’s Pinki Wong spoke to residents and a legal adviser.
Legace called the eviction notice “nonsense”.
“These tactics are usually a ploy to get folks who are paying lower rents out of the park,” he said. “But the issue is a lot of these seniors have nowhere to go, and they take these threats seriously.”
According to the advocate, about 50 long-term residents have already left since the notice was issued.
Lagace says around 15 other residents are also planning to file a group dispute resolution with the RTB to protect their rights.
Seniors face homelessness
Terence Haeber, who has lived at the park for seven years, has also filed a dispute resolution to the RTB with the help of his sister Lori Summer, and is waiting for the decision.
“I would likely be homeless if I have to leave,” Haeber said.
Summer says the owner attempted to pressure tenants into signing a temporary agreement, called a licence of occupation. This agreement would waive any rights and protections the tenants have under the MHPTA, according to the Housing Ministry.
“First of all, he tried to hand out the [license of occupation], and for those that wouldn’t sign it, he said that they were going to be evicted,” she said.
“When he found that really nobody was going to sign, he decided that he was going to close the park.”
Lagace expressed concern that the tenancy branch may not rule in favour of the 15 tenants who are involved in the group dispute, as the branch did in Gendron’s case.
“The issue is the RTB is not all that consistent in these decisions,” he said.
“So even though I think these cases are fairly straightforward … there’s some arbitrators that do see things differently.”