It’s high time we had a loud voice to speak for the many trailer park tenants in this city. I, along with many others, honestly believed the whole purpose of living in a trailer park was supposed to ease the burden of high-cost living, especially for low-income families, seniors and those of us on below-poverty disability income. Wrong.
First of all, I’d like to wake this city up that we as tenants really shouldn’t be paying property taxes, as we do not own the land our trailers are on. Property tax is something I believe the owner of the whole park should be doing via pad rent. After all, a mere $50-70 a month taken from my soon-to-be-unjust rent increase coming up in November really shouldn’t dent the owner’s $400,000-a-year profit too much, right? Really, who came up with the greed-filled idea to ding us twice for the same thing, and more so, why are we tenants putting up with it? Was it a greedy park owner many years ago that found a loophole so he could gain more profit off the park’s tenants?
Now, I can’t say this for all trailer parks in Penticton but I certainly can with the one I live in, that on top of paying unjust property taxes is unjust rent increases that happen every year, especially for a place that never and I mean never has anything fixed in it (certainly not since I moved here in 2005).
No paving to fix the cracked sidewalks and common road area, no speed bumps on the main road into the beginning of the complex, but that of broken or worn down bumps in the middle of the complex where no one can race to begin with, no speed signs and no private property signs at our two entrances making it so people who don’t even live in our complex can use our street as a race-strip shortcut, and worst of all, trying to live with the now useless 1970s 60-amp power when pretty much everything you own in this 21st century needs to be plugged in.
Apparently many electricians have advised our property management that we should be updated to 100-amp power, which has blatantly been ignored time after time. But management will say: “Well gee, you can have children and pets.” Oh, so increases are based on the fact that we’re allowed children and pets here? I’ve never seen that written on my yearly rent increase on my lease for some reason. I certainly can’t see just increases on the two very menial things we have on our leases (snow removal and sewage removal).
My question to the trailer park tenants of this city: Should we put up with unfair rent increases and paying property taxes for land we do not own? Just a note: Penticton has the highest pad rent in all of B.C., even more so than Kelowna. We are being unfairly duped because we live in a place that has nice weather eight months of the year. Big deal. A lot of people with medical ailments need the sun for healing. This is, in fact, a true statement. There should be at least rent freezes for places like the one I live in, say for every three years.
If I was to go around the entire city with petitions on these two subjects to present to our government, would anyone back me up? Justice does in fact work in numbers. You have to fight for what you believe in and I most certainly believe in this. Do you? Contact me and let me know at wendyorocker@yahoo.ca.
Wendy Tapping
Penticton