Following concerns from Revelstoke residents, of which roughly 13 per cent reside in mobile home parks, Coun. Aaron Orlando submitted a motion to rework the Mobile Home Park Redevelopment Policy.
Orlando sought to include stronger compensation guarantees and other protections for residents in Revelstoke’s 18 mobile home parks, as well as a report exploring all probable implications of the proposed amendments.
“We’ve heard that residents are being blocked from transferring leases when [mobile home park owners] sell their property,” Orlando said. “I’ve heard stories of eviction concerns. The concern is that… having a redevelopment policy is incentivising some of the motivations for these situations.”
The motion included resources from Mission, Langley and Kelowna outlining current policies and tenant protection guides.
“The goal really is just to ensure fair treatment for all residents before and during a redevelopment proposal,” Orlando said, adding his intention was not for staff to develop an entirely new policy but build on the one currently in place.
According to Simon, developing a report would delay work on Revelstoke’s short-term rental strategies, application processing timelines and the Bill 16 affordable housing zoning density project due to the need for external input from legal and legislative reviews.
Mayor Gary Sulz and Coun. Tim Palmer raised concerns that the proposed motion was focusing on issues outside of municipal jurisdiction and external resources would need to be brought in, adding costs to the staff project.
Instead, Palmer nodded to advocacy work council and staff could do to push for provincial protections around mobile home parks, including future motions at Southern Interior Local Government Association and Union of B.C. Municipalities.
“I think that’s really where we have some ability to influence provincial policy in understanding where other communities have come, where the concerns are,” Palmer said.
Coun. Lee Devlin also voiced concerns that the motion was trying to fix a policy that so far had not shown any weaknesses, spending taxpayer money and delaying other key projects.
“We have yet to see that policy be tested, we have yet to see any gaps in that policy. If we do see that policy tested and I do see gaps in that policy, I’ll be the first one to support strengthening the policy, re-examining the policy,” Devlin said.
When asked if the city could put a moratorium on redeveloping mobile home parks going forward, Simon explained the city could change the current policy to state it would not be supportive of rezoning, limiting what redevelopments could take place.
“Will that create unintended consequences? Potentially,” Simon said. “What those consequences are from an owner’s perspective, we’d have to unpack that a little bit more.”
He clarified that Revelstoke’s current Mobile Home Redevelopment Policy focuses on preventing displacement when examples from Langley and Mission worked on the premise that displacement would eventually happen.
Simon voiced concern about developing policies that created targets, such as stratification would encourage developers to hit those targets instead of working with residents and the city on more inclusive strategies.
“I’ll remind you, as council you guys are the final decision makers for any rezoning application. None of the mobile home parks that we currently have can be stratified without going through a rezoning process,” Simon said, adding the current policy legally binds developers to take all actions to keep residents from being displaced before rezoning is supported.
“If that can’t happen to the satisfaction of council, don’t expect there to be staff support for your application and don’t expect there to be council support,” Simon said.
The current policy could face its first major test, with both Coun. Matt Cherry and Orlando noting while no formal applications have been submitted, inquiries and redevelopment pre-planning for one mobile home park have been brought to the city.
“I want to consider getting to a simplified resolution that would simply ask staff to provide a preliminary report back about options to some of the concerns that we are hearing from residents,” Orlando said in response to council hesitation over approving the proposed motion. Orlando was the only council member to vote in favour of the motion, leaving it defeated.
Sulz put forward a motion that he work with development services staff on a policy that could then be brought back to the committee of the whole for interpretation and then brought to council. The motion passed unanimously.
This article was part of Revelstoke Mountaineer’s City Council Minute newsletter, where we recap the highlights of every general city council meeting. To sign up for our newsletter and be the first to read our stories, sign up on our website.
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