Trailer park residents fear forced removal

Approval for a condominium on the site of Idlewheels Trailer Court has some residents of the Charlottetown trailer park worried about where they will go when they receive eviction notices.

'You're going to lose your homestead.' — Irene Saunders

The trailer park on Mt. Edward Road has been a neighbourhood fixture for many years, mostly hidden from the street by mature trees. But the owner, L and A MacEachern, has other plans for the property. It wants to build a condominium. Some of the residents fear when that happens, they won't be able to sell their trailers and will have nowhere to go.

"There's nothing anybody can do about it," Irene Saunders, who has been living at Idlewheels for six years, told CBC News this week.

"You're going to lose your homestead. It's not very nice what they're doing to us. If I knew that, I would never have moved here in the first place."

Council rejected plans

City council rejected plans for apartments on the trailer-park land in February. At the time, Saunders thought her worries were over. But unbeknownst to the residents, L and A MacEachern appealed the city's decision to the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission, and won.

'My property value is going to go down.' — Lynn  McArthur

L and A MacEachern owner Ken MacEachern said he doesn't know when the apartments will go up.

Saunders said she doesn't know what she will do when she gets her six-month notice to leave, because she says all the mobile home parks she has looked into are full.

Resident Elwood Coakes also worries he will have nowhere to go, and doesn't know what he will do with his trailer.   

"Just give it to somebody, or put it on somebody's land and sell it. It's better than bulldozers taking it away," said Coakes.

Some neighbours are also concerned about the plans.

Lynn  McArthur and her husband own three houses across from the trailer park. She says the new development will bring too much traffic and garbage with it.

"My property value is going to go down," she said.

"It's going to be really hard to sell, because eventually these are all going to go apartment buildings down this street."

The city has not appealed IRAC's decision, but the public will get one more chance to comment when the developer applies for a building permit.