While Calgary city councillors voted in favour of getting a scoping report on a potential RV site, others felt such a site amounted to little more than a campground.

A Notice of Motion put forward by Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot was discussed Tuesday evening at the Jan. 28 Regular Meeting of Calgary city council. It called for a report on a possible city-owned site that could accommodate a third-party-operated location where people living in their RVs could legally park overnight.

The motion stemmed from an ongoing situation involving Calgarians who had been parked along Moraine Road in northeast Calgary, living in their RVs.

Coun. Chabot said that it’s not necessarily a municipal responsibility, and he’d like to see the province come to the table on a possible solution.

“I think we need a starting point to look at whether or not we can even find a site that’s suitable for this particular need, that may morph into something even greater than what this is envisioning,” he said.

Chabot’s motion had suggested a city-owned parcel of land that could potentially require capital upgrades, safety and security considerations and even a rezoning requirement to allow for the RVs to stay there. It would also require a third-party operator.

“I don’t think this should be on the backs of Calgarians, which is why I wanted some sort of a mechanism to do some sort of an entry level assessment to see whether there’s a need,” Chabot said.  

“We don’t want to offer this as a free-for-all to everybody. We want to offer this service to those folks who truly need it, because they have no other option.”

Chabot did amend the motion to have the information come back to committee in Q3 rather than Q2. Having it come to committee also allows for further public input, either from surrounding communities or to the RV citizens themselves.

Duplicating an existing business, said Walcott

Ward 8 Coun. Courtney Walcott, though sympathetic to the issues, said he questioned what’s changed on city council, as support for encampment-style living has historically been low.

“The thing that I’m stuck with is I’m trying to figure out if this scoping report is into city land when we are finding city land for affordable housing, let alone to build an RV park, because that’s what I’m reading, is that this is essentially a public RV park that we would put on city land, determine how we would operate it, and create some form of process that would be attached to it,” he said.

“So, I’m very sympathetic to the need, but I’m unclear as to why we… that’s a business.”

He said it’s duplicating an RV park business and essentially creating an encampment for people with cars.  Instead of setting up a city-owned RV park, why not offer long-term street permits, Walcott said.

James Wright, one of the Calgarians who lives in an RV in northeast Calgary, suggested that an on-street permit would be the easiest solution.

“A residence parking permit to make it like an industrial parking permit or something,” he told LWC.

“Because permits, I mean, you have to keep up with certain codes. You have to keep up… they can do monthly inspections on permit holders, or they pull the permit, and you’re out.”

Wright said the separated site would be a big undertaking.

He added that it’s important for the city to connect with the people who are living in their RVs, rather than developing a bureaucratic solution to the challenge.

“We need to be able to voice, when they go through the plan, they need to know this is what – we don’t need this right away. We need this right away. They need to – we know what the priorities are,” Wright said.

Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean said while he too is sympathetic, he’s concerned about the “dangerous precedent” it would be setting.

“I mean, where does it end if we start offering free RV… it’s kind of a lifestyle or a choice in some cases,” he said.

“It’s going to be oversubscribed like crazy. Everybody’s going to want to jump on it. We won’t be able to build fast enough.”

While councillors expressed their concerns over the actual implementation of the site, they voted 13-1 in favour of the scoping report. Coun. McLean was opposed.