Dear Everyone, 

Thank you again for your compassionate and committed work to expand affordable housing options on Eastern Vancouver Island. We are now 1240 strong! Your voices matter, and people who live in RVs and tiny homes are the number one experts on the role these units can play in safely and affordably housing people during the worst housing crisis of our generation -- and that the use of these units is our communities' collective response to a housing emergency that governments have broadly failed to address in a meaningful or timely way in rural Vancouver Island. 

The RDN and Islands Trust recently shared their findings of their own Tiny House research work, where they worked with building inspectors, tiny home builders, and others to try and formalize tiny house living. For now, given the challenges of dealing with convincing national and provincial building agencies to change their certification codes, the Islands Trust and RDN are choosing to affirm that their chosen regulatory approach is to recognize those units built to the Canadian Standards Agency's manufactured housing (CSA240MH and/or A277) standard. To be clear, this housing standard was always legal. What is now affirmed is that local governments in the region will recognize units on wheels built to this CSA240MH manufactured housing standard as 'allowable' housing. 

This is a great start, but raises questions about existing units that builders sold to the public over the last decade built to the CSA240RV standard, and about the use of other movable structures (including RVs, self-built tiny homes, and others) that people across Vancouver Island have been living in safely, autonomously, and affordably for a very long time. 

We need our elected officials and policymakers to keep the momentum going and find the courage and creativity to push the province and federal governments to come up with a more comprehensive regulatory approach that recognizes the role that diverse movable homes are already playing in solving the housing emergency. This work must also recognize that housing is a human right, and that our local governments must take all reasonable steps to ensure affordable housing for all. Unlike the subsidies and concessions BC municipalities offer to major developers, tiny homes and RVs do not cost taxpayers millions in infastructure costs. They are designed to fit within existing property footprints, to tie in to existing services, and use minimal resources relative to your average single family home. These units can be responsibly and rapidly mobilized to respond to housing needs. 

It is important that our local governments and provincial decision-makers hear from YOU, the people who are already mobilizing creative housing solutions without government help, to remind them that we need to ensure we do not criminalize people for simply living in movable units that fall outside the CSA240MH certification moving forward. 

To this end, the RDN is currently preparing a report for the Board of Directors on the feasibility of RV living as an affordable housing strategy. 

IT IS VITAL THAT STAFF AND THE BOARD HEAR DIRECTLY FROM COMMUNITY MEMBERS WITH LIVED EXPERIENCE OF RV and TINY HOUSE LIVING and from allies who support this housing option. Feel free to send the board of directors and staff a letter in support of an approach to RVs and tiny homes that acknowledges that this is a housing solution our communities have already generated, for free, that helps house us. We have pathways to using these types of housing responsibly, without criminalizing those units that do not fit existing Canadian and BC standards. 

You can contact the RDN Board and staff at the following e-mail addresses: 

vanessa.craig@rdn.bc.ca; stuart.mclean@rdn.bc.ca; jessica.stanley@rdn.bc.ca; lauren.melanson@rdn.bc.ca; bob.rogers@rdn.bc.ca; leanne.salter@rdn.bc.ca; lehann.wallace@rdn.bc.ca; leonard.krog@nanaimo.ca; tyler.brown@nanaimo.ca; ben.geselbracht@nanaimo.ca; erin.hemmens@nanaimo.ca; janice.perrino@nanaimo.ca; paul.manly@nanaimo.ca; ian.thorpe@nanaimo.ca; mayor@parksville.ca; councillorwood@parksville.ca; mayor.swain@lantzville.ca; mayor@qualicumbeach.com

Relevant RDN staff to include: 

GKeller@rdn.bc.ca; pthompson@rdn.bc.ca; planning@rdn.bc.ca

In solidarity, 

Oceanside Affordable Housing