HOUSING CRISIS: Enderby mom can’t afford rent, wintering in RV with kids

A mom and her two kids are wintering in a fifth wheel at an RV park in Enderby after being evicted from a rental they lived in for almost a decade.

Unable to secure affordable housing, the mom was forced to downsize the family’s belongings and put the rest into storage units last month.

“It’s definitely a hit on my self esteem about being a mom,” she said. “I want to provide a good, safe home for my children and I’ve been unable to find anything.”

iNFOnews.ca has agreed to not identify her as she fears repercussions from the Ministry of Children and Family Development for living in an RV with her kids.

Suffering from a life-long depression disorder, she’s on disability assistance. Two years ago, she separated from her husband. He moved out and she stayed in the home they had been renting for nine years.

This past spring, the landlord gave notice he and his family would be moving into the home and was given 16 months to find somewhere else to live. At the end of August, she was given a new eviction notice from the landlord with only three months notice. She re-homed her two cats and one of her three dogs and put her name on the registry for subsidized housing with BC Housing.

Her search for an affordable three-bedroom rental was fruitless.

“Everything I found was way over my budget, I have a fixed income but it’s low,” she said. “Some places wouldn’t allow two dogs or were really far away from my kids’ school and I didn’t want to switch schools for them. I wanted to stay close to Enderby because my mom is here and she had a heart attack in the spring. I was trying to find a place where my mom could live with us but she uses a walker and everything had stairs.”

With disability assistance, child support and child tax credits, the mom brings in under $3,000 per month. She said the rentals she looked at cost well over $2,000 a month with some of them priced at more than $3,000.

“How can I afford to pay for all the rest of the bills plus food and gas,” she said.

A 2024 Market Rental report by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation shows demand for rental units outpacing supply across the country, with lower-income renters facing below-average vacancy rates for more affordable units.

A rent report published by Rental.ca in November shows the average cost for a two-bedroom unit in Kamloops is $2,174 per month and $2,332 in Kelowna . It doesn’t specify the cost for three-bedroom units for individual cities, but shows units of this size decreased by 0.2% from last year to an average of $2,539 nationwide.

With the stress of the uncertainty impacting the mom’s already compromised mental health, she packed up, put everything into four storage units and moved into an old trailer she owned.

“I didn’t know what to do so, sadly we moved into it,” she said. “The furnace and the hot water tank wasn’t working. The fridge started working and died.”

A kind stranger heard about the mom’s situation and loaned her a functioning fifth wheel the trio is currently living in at an RV park in Enderby for a monthly pad fee of roughly $1,100.

“I don’t know how to live in an RV in the winter but I’m learning,” she said. “I have to learn how to keep track of the septic tank and skirt it and buy bigger propane tanks to make sure nothing is going to freeze. It’s frustrating, I have to go buy the skirting today and don’t know how much to buy.”

She said her kids are adapting to the new live style and stress better than she is.

“Over the years, dealing with depression and anxiety, I know my limit,” she said. “If I push myself too much I go downhill really fast. The depression has got worse and my self esteem has gone down. It’s hard to think I’m not functioning how I need to for myself and my kids.”