Terry Farrell
terry.farrell@comoxvalleyrecord.com
Jessica and Josh Babcock live in a three-bedroom home in Black Creek with their seven children.
At least they do until the end of the month.
The landlords in the home they are renting are moving back in, so the Babcocks need to find a place to live. This is not a situation where anyone is at fault. The Babcocks understand that their current landlords are completely within their rights to ask their tenants to vacate. The landlords gave the Babcocks the required 60 days’ notice, and since then, Jessica and Josh have been trying to find a new home. It hasn’t been easy.
Jessica said as soon as she tells a prospective landlord she has seven kids, “the doors shut. I go to a viewing, go through the whole process, and as soon as they hear we have seven kids, it’s done. So I have started just by telling them that. I say ‘are you interested in renting to a large family? We don’t need a lot of space.’ But they immediately say ‘our home is too small; it wouldn’t work.’ “
On April 1, the Babcock family could be homeless.
Jessica said although she tries to stay strong, it’s getting scary.
“I have days where I have momentary panic attacks, for sure,” she said . “(Josh) has to calm me down.”
“I’m a little more comfortable. I grew up on Cortes Island… a little more dandelion fluff. I’ve lived out of a bag before – two pairs of jeans and some sandals. I was homeless before. I lived on the streets in Vancouver.”
“So I’ve experienced it and survived. But it isn’t the world I would choose, or want my kids to experience. Not at all.”
Their situation is a familiar one in the Comox Valley.
According to the Comox Valley Vital Signs Report, published in October, there is a 0.5 per cent rental vacancy rate in the Comox Valley, making it among the lowest in Canada. With a vacancy rate of less than one per cent, it’s a “landlord’s market” so to speak. Homeowners looking to rent their houses can pick and choose among a huge list of renters; and, as Jessica alluded to, families with seven children, aged 10 months to 14 years, are not extremely attractive to landlords, regardless of their references.
Richard Clarke, chair of Dawn to Dawn Action on Homelessness, said the situation in the Valley is dire.
“It’s difficult for anyone to find rental accommodation in the Valley, generally speaking… and certainly anything larger than a two-bedroom, is really tough,” he said. “Rentals of houses as opposed to condos, apartments or suites, has certainly tightened up.”
Clarke said Dawn to Dawn is currently housing approximately 50 people in the Comox Valley, including children,
“…but it’s tough - we can’t always find (accommodations). We’ve got a couple of clients going through the same thing (as the Babcocks), so we are hunting too.”
Clarke offers a couple of explanations as to the reason for the crisis.
“People have bought (houses) and invested in the Comox Valley planning for retirement, and now they are retiring; or the have got offspring that is homeless and needs a place… stuff that has been available for rent is now being used by the family that owns it. We have seen quite a bit of that happen.”
Clarke is also member of the leadership team for the Coalition to End Homelessness in the Comox Valley (COECV), which conducted a Point in Time count last April, to give the Comox Valley a snapshot of homelessness in the community.
The survey interviewed 157 homeless adults, and Clarke estimates that there is a homeless child for every two homeless adults.
While that number represents the minimum number of homeless people in the Comox Valley, should the Babcocks be unsuccessful in their home hunt this month, the number of homeless children in the Comox Valley will spike by nearly 10 per cent at the end of the month, from one family alone.
“We are seeing more and more families, with children,” said Betty Tate, a representative of the Comox Valley Association Network of Registered Nurses, and another COECV leadership team member.
Clarke said investments from the Province are helpful, and said the federal government is “… talking about re-introducing a national housing strategy.
“So there is some hope that something is going to happen in the next little while. But part of the challenge is the availability of land. So hopefully there will be some relief in the future, but for the next little while, it’s going to be tight.”
As for the Babcocks, they say the rental crisis goes far beyond the Comox Valley.
They said they have searched areas throughout the province, with no success. Josh is a landscaper and the children are home-schooled. As such, relocation is not as much of a challenge as it could be. But they still have had no success in finding a new rental property.
“We’ve looked all over B.C. There might be places available in (isolated centres) like Sayward, but you’re looking at the work situation and it just wouldn’t work.”
“Right now, we are looking at RVs,” said Jessica. “That may be the only way we could ever get out of the rental market.”
A family of nine, in a recreation vehicle sounds unmanageable, but Jessica said the kids are taking it all in stride.
“They are all pretty young,” she said. (Six of the seven children are under 10 years old.) “They are kind of looking at it like an adventure. But the way rentals go nowadays, you’re stuck paying someone else’s mortgage, and there’s nothing left, at the end.
“We will get through this somehow. As long as we are together, we’ll be OK.”
The Babcocks can be reached through Jessica’s Facebook page, at https://www.facebook.com/jessica.babcock