“We Are Not Garbage — We Are People” – Voices From Inside the Tiki Village Eviction.
Sherry Campbell, 56, is one of those voices.
Campbell is one of about 40 residents of Vernon’s longstanding Tiki Village Motel – the ‘Gem of the Valley’ it still reads on its marquee at the corner of 25th Avenue and 34th Street – who found themselves without a home Wednesday, Nov. 19.
The residents were given eviction notices by property managers Nov. 13, due to “electrical problems,” and had until 12 p.m. Nov. 19 to leave.
Campbell was one tenant who shared her story with local media, then sat in heartbreak with her neighbours as “we have watched the headlines and online comments with growing disbelief.
“It is easy, perhaps too easy, for the public to glance at an article about an aging motel, skim mentions of police calls or poverty, and assume they know who we are. It is easy to say “crackheads,” “problem residents,” and “just clear it out.”
That’s not the reality, said Campbell. That’s not who lives – lived – at the motel. Campbell had been a resident for about seven months. Others as long as 10 months, some as short as three months.
And behind the thin motel walls are human beings, said Campbell, many of whom have nowhere else to go. That includes her.
They’re not asking for handouts or special treatment — they are asking for dignity, respect, and the “lawful notice that every person deserves.”
“One of my neighbours is a veteran, a man who served this country and now survives on a fixed income,” said Campbell. “His hands shake when he holds the eviction notice. He locked himself in his room, sitting in his robe, crying — terrified of what will happen now that he has stayed past the lockout date. This is how we treat those who once risked their lives for our safety?”
In another room, said Campbell, is an elderly man, dying. His room is filled with hospital equipment. He’s hooked up to medical devices, barely speaks above a whisper, and yet he is expected to pack up and leave within days because, “the building was deemed unsafe long after he had nowhere else to go.”
“How can someone who cannot walk be expected to ‘vacate immediately?’” asked Campbell. Residents received another evacuation notice Nov. 19.
Campbell’s neighbours are people with chronic illnesses, cancer, mental illnesses – one woman suffers mentally and physically, but was able to find another motel to move to.
Some can barely afford medication. Some residents suffer with mobility issues, and there are others, said Campbell, on disability who simply do not have first and last month’s rent for a new place.
“Many of us are working people — housekeepers, cooks, dishwashers — trying to keep our lives together in an increasingly unaffordable city,” said Campbell. Yes, some residents struggle with addiction. That is a reality in nearly every low-income housing environment, and pretending it isn’t would be dishonest.
“But addiction does not erase a person’s worth. It does not justify treating residents like trash to be swept aside for redevelopment. We are a community. We share food. We check on each other when someone doesn’t leave their room. We lend out spare blankets in the winter. We are mothers, fathers, veterans, seniors, and people trying — desperately — to survive.
“What we received instead of empathy was a one-week termination notice, taped to doors, worded in a way that felt cold and dismissive. Many of us questioned its legality. All of us questioned its humanity.”
The displaced tenants want the public to understand they are not faceless characters in a struggling motel. They are not the stereotypes that get scrolled past on social media.
They are people with histories; with families; and, now, with fears.
“This situation is not just an eviction,” said Campbell. “It’s displacement, trauma, and, for some, potentially a death sentence.
“All we are asking for is what any Canadian deserves: proper notice; respect; recognition that our lives have value.
“Before anyone judges us, we ask that you look past the headlines and see the truth: we are not garbage being swept out of the way for redevelopment. We are human beings.
“And we deserve to be treated like it.”
The Tiki Village was built in 1968 and opened as the Tiki Village Motor Inn, a 30-room motel featuring A-frame architecture at the front, which remains.
The website mytiki.life says a “previous owner in the 1990s cleared out many of the weathered original tikis and tried to remodel things for a more Japanese aesthetic.”
Calls to the motel’s owner company and to the B.C. Residential Tenancy Act’s communications department, to discuss the short notice of evacuation, have not been returned.