In an affidavit, Tracy Peters, a former resident of Midfield Mobile Home Park, recounted a meeting she had in October 2016 with Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra, the representative of Ward 9 at the time.
“I recall some of his words exactly, because they made me so angry I went home and wrote them down, and have repeated them many times since that day. His words were:
‘The Mayor and I have decided that we no longer want mobile home parks to be part of Calgary’s affordable housing strategy,’” Peters stated.
She believes this decision is based off of the “prejudices and negative stereotypes associated with people who live in mobile home parks."
Although Peters believes discrimination is a factor, there may be different reasons why mobile home parks are not part of Calgary's affordable housing strategy.
“One of the things that's always struck me about Calgary is how few mobile home parks there are here,” said Byron Miller, coordinator of the urban studies program at the University of Calgary.
ARE MOBILE HOME PARKS THE END OF AN ERA?
Photo by Amy Simpson
The Calgary Housing Company provides affordable housing options for Calgarians. Midfield residents were given information about these programs and had access to their resources.
Photo by Amy Simpson
Photo by Amy Simpson
Some find the closure of mobile home parks concerning as Calgary is already known to have a lack of affordable housing.
In 2017, a study completed by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy found that, although the population of Calgary has increased by 96 per cent over the last 25 years, affordable rental properties have decreased by 24 per cent.
On average, six per cent of housing in Canadian cities is considered affordable housing. However, according to Teresa Goldstein, manager of affordable housing at the city, Calgary is only sitting at 3.6 per cent.
“We have significant under supply of affordable housing,” she said, adding the lack of affordable housing is due to a mix of factors.
In the mid 70s to early 90s, a significant amount of money was given by the federal government to spur on multi-family apartments. However, the economy drove the prices up as they were being built and there was no dedicated affordable housing strategy in place to ensure housing options were available for all Calgarians.
Goldstein also said that 76 per cent of housing in Calgary is single-detached homes which often require a higher rent. This, along with the conversion of rentals into condominiums has added to Calgary's low affordable housing score.
Mobile home parks are not part of the city's affordable housing strategy, but according to Goldstein, they are part of the larger picture of affordable housing.
“The mobile home parks themselves are not operating as affordable housing in that social housing sector, but they form part of the continuum around housing affordability," she said.
"So it's another piece, another type of housing that people would be able to access and live in."
Miller adds, “The merit or advantage of mobile home parks is that they provide a form of home ownership that is quite affordable. It's really one of the lowest cost options for home ownership."
But with mobile home parks outside of the city's affordable housing strategy, what housing options are they pursuing?
“A priority of our council is to have affordable housing in every community and every neighborhood in the City of Calgary,” said Goldstein.
Calgary Housing Company currently has five types of affordable housing developments that they build, but they have found a lot of success with smaller townhouse-like buildings.
“They think of them being a density that is very easy to stick into neighbourhoods because they aren’t big sky scrapers,” she said.
“Rather than putting, you know, one hundred families in one building, we found that there is a lot more success with neighborhoods and giving supports to people that live there when they're kind of in the forty to sixty unit range.”
This also means the buildings go unnoticed and fit right into the community without causing alarm.
“If you were walking down the street, you would never know they were affordable housing, you would think it was just a townhome,” she said.
In order to boost the per cent of affordable housing in Calgary, the city is collaborating with the entire affordable housing sector.
“We realized to move from the 3.6 per cent to the six percent is actually around 15,000 new affordable housing units,” Goldstein said.
“It would take [the city] 60 years and a pool of money that we would never be able to access to do that on our own.”
Instead, the city has created a six point plan called Calgary’s Corporate Affordable Housing Strategy.
According to Goldstein, the strategy is “a framework for the city and basically the whole nonprofit housing sector to work around over the next ten years.”
The six points include leveraging city land, getting the Calgary community building, designing and building new city units, regenerating city-owned properties, strengthening intergovernmental partnerships and improving the housing system.
An affordable housing plan is important in a city like Calgary, but residents of Midfield Mobile Home Park were in need of affordable housing right away.
“Calgary housing did nothing to help me find a place,” said former resident, Carla Chalanchuk.
On Sept. 28, 2015, residents received a letter from the City of Calgary with suggested accommodations that included information for the Mustard Seed and the Calgary Homeless Foundation.
“We are trying to reduce homelessness, not increase it,” said councillor candidate, Dean Brawn, while campaigning in the 2017 municipal election.
While the city did provide supports for the residents to create a plan for the park closure, some residents said they never felt supported, while others faced homelessness.
Prediger and Tony Shwaluk both mentioned how Chalanchuk took the $20,000 and shortly regretted that decision.
“She phoned and she’s crying, you know - ‘I’m homeless!’" Prediger recounted. “I said, ‘I told you to stay in your home.’”
In October 2017, Chalanchuk said she was currently sleeping in the living room of her mother’s house but had finally found a place to move to.
“But it’s rented,” she told us. “It’s not my home. Just a place to stay.”
According to Goldstein, roughly 4,000 people are on the waitlist for Calgary Housing. However, she adds if somebody was in an emergency situation, there would be options through the City of Calgary.
“We have three different offices in our city where people can go to and speak to Calgary Housing Company staff around their housing needs right away,” she said.
Someone fleeing domestic violence or another emergency would also have support through various societies in the affordable housing sector such as the Calgary Homeless Foundation, Children’s Cottage or other housing providers.
With no vacant lots or new mobile home parks slated for development, residents of Midfield either have to move their homes outside the city or find other places to live.
According to the City of Calgary, as of September 2017, 15 people from Midfield had moved into Calgary Housing accommodations.
Some moved their homes to towns like Strathmore and High River, some residents moved into retirement homes and others, who could afford it, purchased mortgages on homes.
Midfield residents were forced to scatter, but the city says their new strategy hopes to bring communities together.
“We are trying to reduce homelessness, not increase it.”
-Dean Brawn
“It would take [the city] 60 years and a pool of money that we would never be able to access to do that on our own.”
-Teresa Goldstein
“The merit or advantage of mobile home parks is that they provide a form of home ownership that is quite affordable. It's really one of the lowest cost options for home ownership."
-Byron Miller
“A priority of our council is to have affordable housing in every community and every neighborhood in the City of Calgary.”
-Teresa Goldstein
“I've lived in other cities where they are much more common,” he said. “You tended to see mobile home parks being developed in an era where there was not much concern about how sprawling a city was or about how much land was being consumed.”
According to Miller, mobile home parks are affordable, but were more feasible in the past. The City of Calgary is now looking to decrease urban sprawl by moving in a different direction.
"The city is in the process of trying to become denser and that densification is taking place in nodes and corridors,” he said, adding that a mobile home park built on prime real estate would be a prime site for redevelopment.
Municipal development plans are publicly discussed and available to the public, but Miller said often times when a development is proposed, people are surprised or didn’t expect the outcome.
“People may not have been aware of the plans that were in place and that's actually not that uncommon - people often don't know the plans for their own neighbourhoods,” said Miller.
As the city builds up instead of out, mobile home parks seem to be slowly phasing out. In 2012, the Calgary Herald reported that there were 11 mobile home parks in Calgary, but now there are only eight.
The City of Calgary provided a list of housing options for Midfield residents along with the notice of the closure of the park.