A group of homeowners is fundraising to fight their eviction by the Squamish Nation.
Three of the Riverside Trailer Park homeowners have launched a GoFundMe campaign called All 19 Families Wrongfully Evicted to help them pay legal costs for a possible class action lawsuit, according to Riverside resident Brittney Durham.
“We believe that we will be able to secure the best lawyer in Canada to handle this case,” reads the campaign webpage, which was created by Durham.
The homeowners behind the fundraising campaign say they want to fight their eviction because they don’t think they have been fairly treated or compensated.
“We accept that we will have to move from the park,” the campaign website statement reads. “But we should, at the very least, receive fair market value for leaving.”
The homeowners say it will cost $15,000 to retain a lawyer’s services for their case.
In September, Squamish Nation representatives informed 19 trailer owners in the park that they have until Sept. 30 to find another place to put their mobile homes.
The Nation said the park ultimately has to close over “health and safety concerns.” To upgrade the park, which opened in the 1960s, and connect it to District of Squamish water and sewer infrastructure, would cost upwards of $500,000, according to a news release from the Nation released in September.
The Nation therefore concluded the park “was not a viable business.”
Tenants were eligible for a year of free rent and to receive payment from the Nation of $9,600 if they moved by Dec. 31, and $4,800 if they leave prior to March 31.
Only three residents have not signed the Nation contract picking a date to move, according to Chris Lewis, a Nation councillor.
Riverside resident Wendy Linton said she refused to sign the Nation contract and commit to move because the cost to her rights is too high.
“The money offered by Squamish Nation or the year free rent was only available if we… signed away our federal and provincial rights under law; Signed over our trailers for $1 if we couldn’t move them; Agreed not to say anything about the contents of the ‘agreement,’” Linton said in an email to The Chief.
Ongoing controversy has plagued the mobile home park since about 2012, when the Nation told residents the man who previously ran the park for decades, Bill Williams, had no right to the reserve land the residents’ homes sit on. The 19 residents were therefore trespassing, the Nation said.
The homeowners sat in limbo until September last year, unsure of their futures in the park and unable to sell their homes.
Durham, a mom of two, told The Squamish Chief her young family originally moved into the mobile home thinking it was a perfect starter home they would eventually sell for about $100,000 and then get into the single-family home market in Squamish.
With the Nation eviction, her mobile home is practically worthless, she said, and in the meantime the cost of housing in Squamish has skyrocketed.
“It is not fair,” Durham said, adding it has been extremely stressful dealing with the uncertainty of her housing situation.
Adding insult to injury, Durham said, her family recently received a notice from the Nation that they owe for unpaid pad fees. Durham had stopped paying when she received the September eviction, she said.
The notice, forwarded to The Chief, states that if the family doesn’t pay $2,800 within 10 days, the Nation would take legal action.
Lewis said the Nation wouldn’t comment on the homeowners fundraising for their own legal action whether it be, “proposed or actual.”
“With regard to the tenants affected by the closure of the trailer park, of the 19 affected tenants 16 have signed agreements that provide for their departure from the trailer park on or before Sept. 30, 2017; four tenants have already left the site,” he said in an email to The Chief. “The Squamish Nation is dedicated to treating all tenants fairly during the notice and relocation period,” Lewis added.
