For the past six or seven years, a local woman has called the Benchmark Trailer Park home.

For the most part, she has enjoyed living in the area in the trailer owned by her brother and sister-in-law, with her two kids. The neighbours are good, and there haven’t been any major problems.

In fact, she had been planning to purchase the home.

Asking that she not be identified to protect her children’s identity, she said Thursday afternoon she does all she can to be a good tenant.

Only once has her pad rent been late, and only by a couple of days because she was out of town.

As well, she does what she can to help fill in some of the potholes on the road into the trailer park each spring.

“I’ve been a pretty damn good tenant,” she told the Star.

So it was a shock last March when she received an eviction notice from the trailer park, giving her one year to vacate the land.

“It just blows me away,” she said. “It makes no sense.”

The order cited that no work had been done to the outside of the trailer.

However, the woman said she and her brother have been asking for years that the land – which is sloughing behind the trailer – be stabilized.

That has to be done before any work – including a planned addition – can be done to the exterior.

Building materials purchased by her brother have been sitting in the yard under tarps for a few years, and a building permit for the work has expired.

“We’ve had everything sitting in the yard since ’08,” she said.

While she’s volunteered to improve the look of the trailer by painting the exterior, she was told trailers in the park are no longer allowed to be painted.

Contractors who have been contacted about doing any other work to the home say they need the ground at the back of the trailer to be fixed before they can do any exterior work like the addition that was planned.

“You can’t really do anything,” she said.

Three power poles in the area are crooked, she points out, and the water intake for the line running through the park is also in bad shape from the sloughing land.

Repeated calls by both her and her sister-in-law, who owns the trailer, to landlord Rob Twa have gone unanswered, she said.

While the eviction notice argues her yard is an “eyesore”, she noted she keeps everything stacked and tidy, protected by tarps.

Essentially, she said, she’s being evicted with zero cause.

Looking at the current territorial legislation, she said, there is nothing protecting tenants like herself who rent land for their trailers.

If she doesn’t relocate her trailer, she’s been told the trailer park will have it moved, and the trailer’s owner billed for the cost.

And if it is moved, she and her kids aren’t likely able to live in it since it would be required to be brought up to current building codes.

While she has until next March to move the trailer, in reality, she points out she really only has about six to eight weeks now, given that the colder weather will soon set in, making it impossible to properly move the building.

The situation makes her wonder if a similar fate awaits others living in older trailers.

There are many seniors and others who don’t have the money for a large down payment on a new home living in older trailers, she pointed out.

Many of her neighbours initially don’t believe her when they learn she’s been evicted, she said.

As she said, many are under the impression that, as home owners, they have rights, but as she has learned that’s just not the case.

She has yet to determine how she will proceed from here.

Contacted by the Star Thursday afternoon, Twa would not comment on the eviction, calling it a private matter.