May 01, 2007 04:30 AM
\nJim Wilkes
\nStaff Reporter<\/p>\n
It’s an anachronism in the heart of Mississauga.<\/p>\n
Driving along Dundas St. W., west of Confederation Pkwy., it’s unlikely you’d spot the entrance to the trailer park where about 100 people live in 47 mobile homes.<\/p>\n
A tiny tin community for 60 years within Canada’s sixth largest city, it’s surrounded by apartment blocks, office buildings and car dealerships, snug in behind a motor shop that’s up for lease.<\/p>\n
But in less than a year it will all be gone. All the aging trailers along the dirt road that winds through the park. All the people who call it home.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/images\/assets\/220141_3.JPG\")
\nJIM WILKES\/TORONTO STAR
\nVeronica Brooks cleans out her car while her son romps outside her disabled mother\u2019s trailer. <\/p>\n
Residents, who own their trailers but lease the land they sit on, have been given until the end of next March to move out so developers can erect more buildings on the prime property.<\/p>\n
Folks say they got along well with park owner and landlord Anne Jugovich. But when she died in January, many said they feared her daughter might not want to keep the place going.<\/p>\n
On the last day of March this year, residents were handed legal letters giving them a year to leave. If they remove their trailers, they each get $3,000 compensation. If they leave their trailers behind, they’ll be demolished.<\/p>\n
“This is prime land in the middle of Cooksville, but it’s our home,” said Linda Banks, 64, wiping away tears that flow easily when she talks about her uncertain future.<\/p>\n
She’s lived in a trailer for 16 years on a sliver of leased land just a 10-minute walk from the Cooksville GO station and nearby grocery stores and shops.<\/p>\n
Residents’ monthly rents of between $400 and $500 include taxes, hydro and water. Most residents paid between $40,000 and $60,000 for their trailers and some have spent up to $30,000 more to upgrade them.<\/p>\n
“It’s so devastating,” said Banks, who teaches typing part-time to children with learning disabilities in an office building nearby.<\/p>\n
“This was a chance to own a little something. You know what real estate is like. It was a chance to move out here from the city and own your own place.<\/p>\n
“Now, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”<\/p>\n
Donnie Durdle is on a residents’ committee trying to wangle more money from the trailer park owners.<\/p>\n
He said the $3,000 offered so far won’t begin to cover the expenses of those who can move their trailers or those who’ll be forced to leave them behind. Rent for even small apartments nearby are double what residents have been paying for their leased land.<\/p>\n
“With $3,000, what can you do and where can you move? What … do you want us to cry?”<\/p>\n
Durdle, 46, said the nearest trailer park where he could find a vacancy is west of Guelph, but it was accepting only senior citizens or trailers made in 1995 or later. His 35-year-old unit, worth more than $40,000, doesn’t make the cut.<\/p>\n
“It’s sickening,” he said. “Why don’t they just leave us alone and let us live?”<\/p>\n
A lawyer for the trailer park said the money offered is fair.<\/p>\n
“If they have complaints, let them complain,” said Jack Ditkofsky of the Toronto firm Blaney McMurtry. He said the trailer park doesn’t mesh with plans for the area established by the City of Mississauga.<\/p>\n
Mayor Hazel McCallion agreed. “As council, we’ve designated that, down the road, when the landowner decides that they don’t wish to run a trailer camp any more, it will be high density. Period.”<\/p>\n
Ward 7 Councillor Nando Iannicca called the park “a wonderful community” which has caused the city no problems over the years. He said the move for residents would be a “dreadful dislocation.”<\/p>\n
Eighteen-year resident Rocky Cloutier, 63, said getting his eviction notice was “the saddest day of my life.”<\/p>\n
“I just put a lot of money to upgrade my trailer,” he said. “I planned to live here a long time.<\/p>\n
“We should have known something would happen when the landlady died, but for them it’s just a business decision. We’re losing our homes, we’re losing our lifestyle, our way of living for years.”<\/p>\n
For Veronica Brooks, it’s the place where she grew up and where she still returns each day to look after her disabled mother. “My mother has been here 21 years,” said the 30-year-old mother of two. “My father died right here in this trailer. It’s not much, but he worked for it.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know where I can put my mother. My townhouse is already full of people.<\/p>\n
“Here, we’re a community. We all know each other and look after each other. It’s home.<\/p>\n
“What are we going to do when all this changes?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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