Surrey’s vanishing style of living
City’s manufactured home parks are being redeveloped for higher density housing
Will manufactured homes and trailers become a thing of the past in Surrey?
Along Surrey’s King George Boulevard, the city estimates there’s more than 1,000 of these homes. But with light rail planned along the major artery, will they remain?
Surrey community planning manager Don Luymes predicted many will fall.
“As the city grows and transit investments are made along King George, it’s probably inevitable that many of these sites will be redevelopment candidates,” Luymes said.
While the city is not actively pushing for densification along the route, he said the “natural evolution of the city makes it likely” many will face such pressures. “Part of the reason, of course, is they’re fairly centrally located, they’re on good transit corridors and these are well-located properties,” Luymes said.
“Whether a light rail stop or even rapid bus transit is nearby, at some point the value of those properties for higher density developments may lead these property owners to redevelop the site.”
Luymes said when that does happen, the city has requirements for developers to compensate the tenants in such sites when they face redevelopment.
He said city policy “goes beyond” the provincially-mandated compensation.
“What council is essentially saying is anybody wishing to redevelop their property from a manufactured home park to another use would have to come with a relocation and compensation plan that’s acceptable to council,” he explained.
This was the case last year at Park Mobile, along King George Boulevard at 96th Avenue, across from Surrey Memorial Hospital.
WestStone Group plans to build a $250-million state-of-the-art seniors facility there, with more than 400 units of varying levels of care as well as a research centre and offices.
Surrey city council sent the application back to staff to work with the tenants there on a transition plan. Twice, city council delayed the plan over concerns about where the park’s tenants would go.
A city report dated Dec. 5, 2016 said all 47 mobile homes had been acquired by the developer, with all tenants due out by the end of this month.
Luymes acknowledged this is a style of housing that’s “a very viable, affordable housing option that’s very attractive for many people.
“You have your own four walls, it’s a small house right on the ground, you’re not living in an apartment building.”
Luymes guessed that parks away from major transit corridors may remain.
“I think there will be pressure on a number of them in certain locations, but I don’t think every manufactured home park in every part of the city will face development pressure.”
Luymes said it’s important to note there are several types of parks: the meant-to-be temporary RV-style rental pads, those where the homeowner also owns the land, and then there’s the homeowners who rent pads from someone who owns the entire park.
The latter are the ones with the most to worry about, he said.
“They have less security of longterm tenure because they don’t own the land it sits on,” Luymes said.
Roz Bailey has lived in the 55-plus Green Tree Estates along Fraser Highway in Fleetwood for about a decade.
As the name suggests, there are many old growth trees on the manufactured home park’s property.
Bailey, president of the Surrey Manufactured Home Owners Association, boasts that it’s one of the most affordable parks in all of Surrey, in terms of pad rentals, which is just under $500 a month.
Some pad rents have risen in other parks to almost $1,000 a month, she said.
It’s a style of housing she adores, mainly because she’s not up in a tower but instead has her own ground-level home and can garden and visit with her neighbours with ease.
“The government is always, always saying they want seniors to age in place,” Bailey said. “It’s best if you can live safely and independently in a community and you’ve got a lot of informal supports, which are more important than formal ones, really. There’s a lot of community here.”
One of her neighbours, 89-yearold Annabelle Bentley, cherishes many of the same benefits of this style of living.
“I don’t have to climb stairs,” said Bentley, sitting in her home, “and I have so many informal supports.”
Bentley, who is blind in one eye, needs eye drops four times a day. Her daughter helps, but so do her neighbours. “I can’t do it myself,” she said. Dianna Weys, a director of Green Tree Estates, moved into the park with her husband from a condo she owned.
“He wanted his own piece of grass and I wanted a garden,” she said.
Weys cherishes her neighbours and said she couldn’t have survived without them after her husband’s death.
“They helped me out a great deal,” she said. “I can’t repair anything, physical work, so the neighbours helped me out a great deal. I don’t see that happening in an apartment or a condo.”
These residents are not immune to what seems to be ever-increasing housing costs in the Lower Mainland. They fear they may be facing a rent increase of 40 per cent soon, as new owners come in.
It’s a scary thought, they all agreed, because many in the park are on fixed incomes.
A Colliers International ad touting the sale of the property called their park a “development opportunity.” It is now marked as sold. The ad stated the approximately 10-acre Fleetwood property had “significant development potential” and “municipal support for rezoning” and highlighted its proximity to commercial developments, access to major routes, and to several medium density residential developments nearby.
Where would they go if their park ever faced redevelopment?
“I have no idea,” said Bentley, as the others nodded in agreement.
Bailey added: “There’s nowhere to go.”
Surrey-Newton NDP MLA Harry Bains vows to advocate for such people, and has done so for years already.
His fight began, he said, in 2006 when Seacrest Motel and RV Park residents in South Surrey were given eviction notices, so that a new land owner could develop it into condos.
“We met with the homeowners and what really got me moving on this was I sat across from a couple, they were in their late 80s … and they had tears in their eyes looking directly at me saying, ‘Harry, this is our home. We’re told we will be made homeless.’ What had they done wrong to deserve this?” Bains said.
“That really got me thinking that these people, many of them serve our country and build this country and province.
“These are seniors and these are the last years of their lives and they’re being told to pick up their house and move.”
Bains said there was no place for the seniors to move to.
“And even if they found a place, their house is old, it might not last a move. They were right that they would be homeless. I thought: something’s wrong with this picture. We must do better.”
They won that fight in 2007 when Surrey council, led by then-mayor and now-MP Dianne Watts, rejected the developer’s plan.
But the developer changed plans, and following rules laid out in a city bylaw, found a way to make it work a decade later.
In March of this year, the last remaining residents of the Seacrest Motel and RV Park agreed to move off the property.
While officials with developer Lark Projects Ltd. said “everybody was happy,” others disagreed, and faced the challenge of finding an affordable place to live.
“We are human casualties of Surrey’s fast development, closing down beautiful communities for homes we can’t afford,” said Nancy Malloy, one of the last residents to accept a financial settlement package from Lark.
She said she’s been searching for a nearby, affordable trailer park but that search has proved to be fruitless.
“It’s becoming a dying way of living and with the rents the way they are, it’s insane,” Malloy said.
Malloy said she’s encountered several barriers when searching for a new trailer park. The area parks are either too expensive, at capacity or don’t accept trailers older than 10 years.
Another issue, she said, is that some people pay to rent a lot yearround, but only use it for a portion of the year. “I don’t think that’s fair,” she said. Bains vowed to fight to have rules changed to better protect and compensate people like Malloy.
Under the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act, tenants receive 12 months’ notice if a site is to be redeveloped, with moving expenses capped at $5,000.
“There’s no way to move a house for $5,000,” Bains said. “They’d be left with big bills, no place to go and no home left. In this case, they have to actually unhook the services, move their entire home, find a new place to go. All the decks and siding have to be moved as well. “It’s a costly, costly exercise.” Bains said he has twice introduced a private members bill to increase compensation significantly.
When he first introduced it, he sought a cap of $25,000 and a transition plan developed together with owners and homeowners so they had somewhere to go. That bill was shot down, he said. He reintroduced a bill before the provincial election on May 9, and now seeks $30,000 for the moving expense cap.
“These are really nice, small, little communities. They look out for each other. We need to preserve these,” Baines said. “This will be a huge loss to our affordable housing stock.”
“They were right that they would be homeless. I thought: something’s wrong with this picture. We must do better.” — HARRY BAINS SURREY-NEWTON NDP MLA