Here's the news article posted in Today's Barrie Examiner.
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| Frank and Gail Ruffolo have called their 14x55-foot trailer on Burton Avenue in Barrie their home since 2005. The couple and their neighbours now have one year to leave after receiving their eviction notices. The land the park sits on is being redeveloped. MARK WANZEL PHOTO |
A large pink hydrangea bush blooms in the tiny little plot of land leased by one of the tenants of the Burton Avenue trailer park who received their eviction notice July 31.
“Where can we go? We don’t know where to go or the cost of moving to where we could go,” Gail Ruffolo said.
As she spoke, thunder rolled across the sky, unintentionally underscoring the fear the seniors felt when considering their eviction notice.
In out of the rain, Ruffolo and her husband proudly showed their mobile home, with its hardwood flooring and decorative wooden moulding Frank designed to border the ceiling.
He’s added foam for insulation under the trailer, in addition to the skirt he wrapped around the base of the trailer where the wheels — if there were any — would be. The Ruffolos are living on a pension after Frank fractured his back, he said.
“I can’t work. And I know these (other tenants) people can’t afford a dime to move. If they’re willing to move the trailer at their expense, fine. But how can the owners do something like this?” he asked.
Dino Melchior, of Melchior Management, who has been managing the park at 196 Burton Ave., for 15 years said the owners previously turned down several offers to sell the land.
“I know they’ve put off this decision several times,” Melchior said. “For the owners, it’s been the most difficult decision of all.”
Yet, the option to redevelop the land and evict 86 homeowners was made by the numbered Ontario company Melchior represents earlier this year.
To date, the city has received a rezoning and subdivision plan application to build 116 townhouses, along with medium-density residential units at 196 Burton, where as many as 225 people live in trailer homes.
At that time, Melchior said if the land is redeveloped, all tenants with land leases will get one year’s notice to vacate and be compensated $3,000 for mobile-home removal, per the Residential Tenancies Act.
The tenants received that letter July 31.
Melchior, and his associate Ender Joseph, said they have gone above and beyond their management responsibilities and forwarded several local mobile home vacancies to the tenants, as well as are looking for a trailer mover to take on the large project and offer a volume discount, instead of having each tenant work out their own more expensive deal to move their units.
“The removal is strictly the responsibility of the tenants,” said Melchior, adding with the $3,000 cost mandated by the Act per unit, they’re already spending $270,000 to help the tenants move.
But tenant Fleur Ottaway, who’s running a grassroots organization going under the name Burton Avenue Mobile Home Owners Coalition, said several other trailer parks in the area only have limited space; not nearly enough to take all 86 homes.
At Hoe Doe Valley, you have to buy the land, she said, and in Angus and Orillia, they only have a few spots available.
“Ours is a pre-fab home, it’s going to cost more than $3,000 to move it,” Ottaway said, explaining the Act was written to help out mobile trailer owners in the early 1990s and prices have sky-rocketed since then.
Ottaway said she’s been quoted about $12,000 to have her home moved, which won’t include any add-ons such as decks, foyers or rooms tenants have added over the years.
“The industry has evolved, but the Act hasn’t,” she said. “Everyone is really upset because the law isn’t really there for us.”
Mayor Jeff Lehman and Coun. Arif Khan say they aren’t taking the news lightly.
“It’s my understanding that the city does not have the power to intervene in a landlord-tenant matter, ie. to delay or prevent an eviction,” Lehman wrote in an e-mail.
“Given that the residents have been given eviction notices, my focus is therefore to assist them in finding an alternative place to live.”
Lehman notes that wait-lists for social housing are long and may not be an immediate answer for the mobile homeowners.
“City council, including myself, must sit in independent judgment of the planning application, and I will do that. But that aside, these residents are my residents, so I am going to do what I can to help them,” Lehman said.
Khan said he, too, contacted the County of Simcoe regarding social housing availabilities, and has approached senior levels of government for an increase in levels of social funding, but has yet to hear back.
He has also agreed to meet with the mobile homeowners and Simcoe County staff next week to explore viable options.
But he points out that the provincial Residential Tenancies Act offers the right of every landowner to file an application to rezone or develop their property in accordance with the Planning Act.
“I don’t blame those who don’t care to differentiate between municipal and provincial jurisdiction. At the same time, from an unemotional perspective, I completely support the property owners’ right to file their application,” Khan wrote in an e-mail.
Khan and Lehman are scheduled to meet with the Burton Avenue tenants Aug. 14 at Unity Christian High School at 25 Burton Ave. at 5 p.m. to discuss their options.
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