Manufactured homes will have a place in the new Brookswood/Fernridge community plan, Mayor Jack Froese promised mobile home park residents at a question-and-answer session held in Township council chambers.
About 200 residents attended the May 8 session to ask questions about the proposal to more than double the number of people living in the south Langley community and the impact that will have on the seniors who live in mobile home communities.
“I know that whether we call them mobile, manufactured, or by any other name, these are your homes,” Mayor Froese said.
“We know that you have concerns about the future of your homes and we intend to take that into account and prepare the best plan possible.”
Township engineering and community development manager Ramin Seifi, long range planning manager Paul Crawford, and planner Lisa Moffatt fielded questions.
Residents were told the proposed plan will provide maximum protection of existing mobile home parks.
Tenants are also protected under provincial regulations and the Township’s Mobile Home Park Redevelopment Policy, the staffers said.
The meeting with the mobile home owners came after a series of open houses and workshops that were held earlier this year.
Brookswood/Fernridge currently has a population of 13,000. The new Griffith Neighbourhood Plan would increase the number of residents to 40,000 people over the next three decades.
It’s estimated the Township has 35 to 40 per cent of all manufactured homes in the Metro Vancouver region.
Less than one per cent of Township housing is subsidized seniors’ or family housing, compared with nine per cent in the City of Langley and five per cent in Coquitlam.