By Sarah Simpson, Citizen
Betty James is hoping she’s nearing the end of a years-long battle with a local mobile home park whose aim it was, she claims, to deny her disabled son a place to live.
It all started back in May of 2009. James’s son Brian, then 55 years old, was living temporarily in an apartment after the mobile home park he’d been a model resident in for 19 years was demolished.
Betty was trying to help him move to his own trailer at a new park when she agreed to buy in the Silver Park Campsite, “just over the tracks off Boys Road.”
“He was going to be a tenant,” James explained. “But he was denied by the owners of the campsite.”
The trailer purchase was contingent on the campground management’s authorization of Brian as a tenant, as is standard procedure in the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act.
Court documents reveal Janet Richardson, a director of Silver Park Campsites Ltd. and manager of the park refused to give her consent at least three times, asserting Brian might not pay his rent or properly maintain the unit as he had no credit history – he always paid cash – and his monthly disability income of less than $1,000 was insufficient.
“They said it was his credit rating,” Betty said.
Brian was left with a brain injury after a car accident when he was 17 and since then has been lived on his own successfully, albeit with the help of his mother.
Betty took the issue to the Residential Tenancy Branch of the Ministry of Housing and Social Services. A dispute resolution officer ruled in her favour.
Three hearings, a dismissed judicial review, and a failed attempt by Silver Park Campsites Ltd. to appeal to the Supreme Court of British Columbia later, Betty still wasn’t satisfied, believing that the park’s reluctance to admit her son as a tenant was as much because they didn’t think he was good for the $336 a month rent as it was because he was mentally disabled.
“I put it to the BC Human Rights Tribunal that they had discriminated against [him],” Betty said.
“We won it,” Betty said. “It’s been a long battle.”
Tribunal member Marlene Tyshynski noted in her Dec. 23 reasons for decision that Brian’s disability and his source of income were inextricably linked and were, together, the reason why Richardson did not approve his rental application.
Tyshynski found Richardson “made a number of stereotypical assumptions” about Brian, even though all the information she had received proved otherwise.
“She assumed Mr. James relied on Ms. James for ‘everything.’ She would not accept that Mr. James was capable of living a fully independent life as a manufactured home park resident who made a contribution to the tenant community,” Tyshynski noted.
Tyshynski said while Richardson may not have been aware of the specific nature of Brian’s disability, she attributed stereotypical characteristics to him as a result of his disability, and acted based on those assumptions.
That’s discrimination.
Feeling vindicated, Betty said the next step is to attempt to recoup some of her losses.
Dugan Tillie, Silver Park Campsites Ltd.’s lawyer, has since retired. Calls to a spokesman from the firm had not been returned regarding the case before the Citizen’s press deadline.