Trailer owners cite ‘slum landlord’ tactics
CAMBRIDGE — Seasonal campers at a trailer park in Elora say they will lose thousands of dollars because the Grand River Conservation Authority has decided to relocate their trailer sites at short notice.
Owners of the trailers packed the authority’s board meeting Friday and pleaded to be allowed to stay on their sites on the north side of the Grand River.
They’re angry that they learned only last month that the authority wants them to move their trailers from the quiet, riverside Elora Pines area in Elora Gorge park to a site on much higher ground, next to a busy road used by gravel trucks.
At least 16 of the 44 trailers now at the park won’t be able to be moved — those owners say they will lose their investment in their summer homes, some of which have been in their families for decades.
Derek Perumal said authority officials never mentioned the possibility of relocation when he bought his trailer last August, even though he spoke to them at length about plans to upgrade the park sewage system.
“I feel, as a person who just bought into this, that we’ve been had,” Perumal said. He said he paid $10,000 for the trailer and spent another $15,000 on improvements. Others bought trailers as recently as last April without being told of the possibility of relocation.
The authority’s whole approach has been “heavy-handed, slum-landlord tactics” that bully the trailer owners, many of whom are seniors, Perumal said.
The authority bought the former Elora Pines trailer park, which is at the west end of the Gorge conservation area, in 1986.
Though GRCA rules require trailers to be moved out at the end of each year’s camping season — and Elora Pines trailer owners signed agreements each year to that effect — the authority continued the trailer site’s previous practice of allowing the trailers to stay there all winter and never enforced its rule at Elora Pines.
With the trailers in place year-round, many owners have built permanent porches, decks, sunrooms or roofs onto their trailers, investments they say they’ll lose now they’re being told to move.
The conservation authority is required by the provincial Ministry of the Environment to address concerns about the park’s sewage systems, and must report to the ministry by mid-July as to how it plans to do so, said Dave Bennett, the GRCA’s director of operations.
The trailer park’s services, including hydro and water as well as sanitary, are about 35 years old, and the authority has been talking about upgrading them since at least 2012. But it didn’t have enough money in its reserves to do anything until now.
It hired a consultant to assess the sanitary system in the trailer park. The preferred option, of moving the trailer park to new sites on higher ground with upgraded services at a cost of $1.6 million, was identified in early May, and the authority notified trailer owners at a public meeting in midMay — though owners said they never got written notice of the change.
The authority’s board voted Friday to go ahead with the approvals process with the Ministry of the Environment, but asked staff to study other possibilities, such as getting rid of the sewer system for the trailers, and having them use a central washroom.
Trailer owners will be allowed to stay on the current site until at least the end of the 2018 season.
But if the relocation goes ahead they’ll have to move after that.