Single mother had to live in a campground because she couldn't afford rent
Stephanie Reimer says the Fraser Valley's out of control rental market forced her and her daughter into a tent
Stephanie Reimer is thanking her lucky stars that she doesn't have to sleep under them anymore.
She lived in a tent at a campsite in Chilliwack with her teenage daughter from June 1 to June 25.
"If the weather would have been nice, it would have been fine," she said.
"It wouldn't have been so bad, but it was raining and cold the entire time. I mean, we had so many blankets and we froze at night."
Reimer had been living in a small rental suite in Abbotsford, but she was evicted at the end of May.
She says she hunted everywhere she could think of to find an apartment in her price range, but she came up empty.
"I went on Craigslist every single day," Reimer says.
"I went on Kijiji. Every kind of rental place. I went on the church websites, everything."
When all else failed, she bought a big tent and found a campsite near the Vedder River.
Prayers answered
Reimer knew all along that the camp site was fully booked for the Canada Day long weekend, so she wouldn't be able to live there after June 29.
"I went to bed every night crying, because this is not a life for my daughter," she said.
"I was begging God because I needed a place. I was not going to put my daughter on the street."
She says she probably would have been homeless, if it wasn't for a friend who told her about a vacancy in a building in Chilliwack.
Reimer's rental application was accepted and she moved in on June 25, four days before she had to give up her campsite.
She nows pays $720 a month for her suite.
Regional issue
Affordable rental groups say they hear stories like Reimer's every day.
"We get thousands of calls from tenants every year from tenants experiencing thousands of different issues and one of the biggest issues we hear about is tenants who have been evicted," said Jane Mayfield, acting executive director of the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre.
Mayfield would like to see the provincial government review the Residential Tenancy Act to protect families like the Reimers.