Forty-two low-income Bellwood homeowners have recently been threatened with eviction.
This is not the first time that residents in the 50-year-old trailer park community have faced personal and financial disaster. Rick scared the pants off everybody by stating (falsely) that they were about to be evicted by one of his developer friends.
Given Rick’s penchant for telling whoppers, they should have known better than to believe him.
At first residents in the trailer park, which has 254 homes, rejoiced when Parkbridge Inc., a huge Calgary-based business, bought the land, but things have been going steadily downhill: greedy rent increases, illegal double-dipping, Soviet-style intimidation, mass eviction notices, new invasive rules, fear-mongering, court cases and all sorts of other nasty business.
People are frightened and need help. Annie Coghlan, president of the Bellwood community association, is reportedly outraged at the way Parkbridge management operates, and has resigned from her position as a Parkbridge employee.
One root cause of the trailer park blues is the same evil that is rampant all along the strip – contaminated soil from oil spills:
The trailer park has a lot of old rusted oil tanks, and if they leak it can be a real drag digging up all of the toxic waste. They’re finally starting to fill this hole in, nearly a year after the oil leaked and made a beeline for our water table.
The new owners of Bellwood, Parkbridge Inc., seem to be the landlords from hell. They tell residents to tear down their fences and sheds if they’re not pretty enough, but when Parkbridge smashes someone’s home to smithereens they sure leave an ugly mess behind. It was kind of sad seeing the remnants of someone’s life in the rubble.
As if that weren’t enough for Bellwood residents, the arson bugs on the loose haven’t spared the trailer park, just as they haven’t spared Lynwood Village.
bellscorners 
Unfreakingbelievable – there must be some legal recourse that RC has no influence on. Those poor folks don’t have a moments peace, do they? There must be some legal eagles who could dig their teeth into this as a good PR move, and help them out. Booting folks out of their homes just as winter begins is just criminal, and I thought was illegal as well.
As for the arson bugs, I don’t think the police force is too interested, as we are such a small slice of Ottawa, and RC really doesn’t care too much for Lynwood after all the grief we’ve caused him with the road name changes, etc. I think he’d be quite happy if we disappeared off the face of the earth – NO SUCH LUCK, RC!!! Is there anything that the village could do to try to help them? Is there anyone on City Council that would take up the fight??? Sigh…I can’t think of anyone, certainly not the Mayor.
I agree that it does not look good, but if it is true that these residents are breaking the agreement I am not sure what could be done.
Jayme, last I checked, there was no legal requirement to have insurance, these eviction notices will not fly in court, for many reasons. This is simply pure bullying & intimidation…..
This is all old. The new owners of the Park are wonderful, Parkbridge. I know things might happen behind us with home construction but we will be safe. Residents in the Park have been invited to the online meeting about this building information this week. I plan to be watching. Parkbridge is starting to redo my street, Ash Street, soon and they have been trimming problem trees off of homes. I don’t think they would be spending money if we were leaving.They have done other underground replacements of lines and pumping stations and so on.