Diane Perron doesn’t plan on leaving the home her husband built anytime soon.
The widow, whose husband died from Stage IV throat cancer five years ago, has lived year-round at Rock ’n’ Birch Campground in Henniker for the last 10 years. Her home grew over the years: Perron’s husband was a carpenter, and he built a deck, a workshop, a bunkhouse and a screen house, as well as an addition to the trailer where Perron and her sister Ellen live.
The place has fallen into disrepair since John died, Perron said. She hasn’t been able to maintain much of anything, including the hot tub sitting on the front porch. Her living space is small, but it’s toasty, thanks to a small woodstove in the front. She paid about $400 in taxes in 2014, according to a tax bill, and she thinks it went up a little bit last year.
It may not be much, but Perron’s not interested in leaving, no matter what anyone says or thinks about her home.
“I get $1,100 (in Social Security benefits) a month; where would I go?” Perron said. “I can’t live on that unless I go into an old folks home.”
Then, her face crumpled.
“I’m not doing it,” she said, wiping tears away. “I’ll die here. This is my home – my husband built this for me.”
The clock is ticking for Perron, and anyone else living at Rock ’n’ Birch Campground year-round. They will have to find someplace else to go by Nov. 1, according to a settlement agreement out of Merrimack County District Court.
The agreement, which went into effect Jan. 1, states Rock ’n’ Birch must be closed from November to April 30 of each year, because it is intended for seasonal recreational purposes. The settlement ended an ordeal about whether campground owner Raymond Panetta was allowed to rent his sites year-round dating back to at least 2003, according to court documents. He first reached an agreement with the town in 2010 to not use the campground for permanent residency, but it was never enforced.
This agreement requires a gate be installed at the campground’s entrance and be locked while the campground is closed, and access would be limited to maintenance and marketing visits by Panetta, according to court documents. The bathhouse will be locked and winterized, and the water, DIRECTV television service, electricity and sewage system, along with its five pumping stations, will be shut off. The town’s social worker, Carol Conforti-Adams, said more than 50 households will be affected.
Residents learned of the change from a letter signed by Panetta dated Dec. 21, 2016. Perron said she received a lease agreement saying she would agree to abide by the town rules, but she’s adamant she won’t sign it.
“I know I could get into trouble, but I don’t care,” she said.
The town’s counsel, Barton Mayer, did not respond to phone calls and emails for this story. Similarly, Panetta or his lawyer, Karyn Forbes, did not respond to requests for comment.
Limiting year-round dwellings at seasonal campgrounds isn’t unique to Henniker. If a campground isn’t zoned specifically for year-round use, residents who can’t afford to live anywhere else can find themselves with few options when municipalities enforce the state’s laws on campgrounds. Under RSA 216-1, campgrounds are “intended for temporary occupancy for recreational dwelling purposes only, and not for permanent year-round residency.”
That can be especially tough on residents like Perron, who says she has no place to go and can’t afford anything else. She pays $334 a month to keep her trailer on her site, plus utilities, and hasn’t worked since 2011 when she lost her job as a caretaker. She’s 64, and she said she wasn’t sure what was going to happen to her until her Social Security benefits kicked in.
The Rock ’n’ Birch is a lot cheaper than $1,120, the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Merrimack County, according to the NH Coalition to End Homelessness annual report. That figure has increased 3.8 percent since 2014, and it’s not anticipated to slow down anytime soon, according to Coalition Director Cathy Kuhn. The state average is $1,206 per month, with Rockingham County the highest at $1,321 and Coos County the lowest, at $790 per month for a two-bedroom.
Even if rents were to stay stable, finding an available apartment is still difficult, Kuhn said, as the state’s vacancy rate in 2016 was 1.5 percent, a 40 percent decrease since 2014. A healthy vacancy rate, she said, is around 5.5 percent. Merrimack County has a vacancy rate of 1.2 percent.
Because housing is so expensive, it’s not uncommon to see lower-income families living in campgrounds, Kuhn said, which is technically defined as being homeless because campsites are not meant to be permanent housing. Many of the people who resort to campground living are eligible for Section 8 or rent-assisted housing, but they’ll have to get in line to obtain it: the New Hampshire Housing Authority’s website estimates the wait time for a voucher is six to eight years.
“It’s definitely a crisis,” Kuhn said. “In Manchester alone, I know there are 300 families on the waiting list.”
Of the state’s roughly 1,317 people who have been identified as homeless – a number that has dropped 19.5 percent since 2014 – an estimated 143 are living unsheltered in places where people aren’t meant to live full time or have access to in-house facilities, such as heat or running water. This can include cars, tents or campgrounds, Kuhn said.
Sometimes campground or tent living is temporary, and Kuhn said it’s not uncommon for homeless people to find a place to crash with friends or family during the winter. But unstable housing situations are stressful, she said, especially for children.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that residents of Rock ’n’ Birch have some lead time before they have to go, said Stephanie Bray, managing attorney for New Hampshire Legal Assistance.
Not everyone is so lucky. Bray recalled an incident in August 2014 when residents of the former Vegas Block building in downtown Concord, located at 148-158 N. Main St., were given 24 hours’ notice to vacate after the building was considered unlivable due to several fire and life-safety code violations.
She remembers bits and pieces of the scene, like watching the SPCA volunteers gather cats into carriers while explaining to a man in French that, no, he couldn’t take his clothes with him, because the building had a bedbug problem.
“It was apocalyptic,” she said.
She also remembers the City of Concord’s human services office setting up at Concord’s district court to offer assistance to at least temporarily house most of the building’s displaced tenants by the weekend.
“It was magnificent,” Bray said of the city’s effort.
The building’s owner, Remi Hinxhia, has since renamed the building “Remi’s Block” and is working to restore it.
Bray couldn’t recall the kind of aid Epsom gave residents living at Circle 9 Campground, when residents who had lived there long-term started getting evicted. The last to go was Rick Panzieri, known to all as “Muskrat,” who had lived at the camp for more than a decade, and had built a log cabin off his trailer.
It took a court order for Panzieri to leave, and he left pieces of his lodge behind him when he did. The campground’s manager, Sonny Sell, told the Monitor in May 2016 he spent roughly $20,000 in legal fees evicting 32 permanent residents over the course of a year.
Epsom’s welfare administrator, Patricia Hickey, said she could not disclose whether the town helped Circle 9 residents find new housing. Epsom’s welfare department budgeted $28,850 for assistance in 2016, and spent $14,894, about 7 percent more than what they paid out in assistance in 2015.
Municipalities have a legal responsibility to help their displaced residents, Bray said, citing RSA 165:1, which says “Whenever a person in any town is poor and unable to support himself, he shall be relieved and maintained by the overseers of public welfare of such town, whether or not he has residence there.”
Henniker has argued that the people living at the campground aren’t residents of the town, even though they have no place else to live. “No occupant in the campground may become a resident of the town by virtue of such occupancy, nor may such person … register an automobile, register dogs, or vote,” the 2010 settlement with Panetta reads.
Bray is optimistic Henniker will come through for its residents; she said the town’s lawyer has assured her they will do everything in their power to get residents the help they need.
“My hope is we move forward in a positive way with this,” Bray said. “But as to what the town will do when it comes to helping each individual before November, only time will tell.”
Town caseworker Conforti-Adams said she had worked with several families during the fall of 2015 to fill out housing applications when it looked like the campground would close. Those families stopped working with her, however, when it looked like the campground wouldn’t close. She wished they hadn’t – they would be much closer on a waiting list for subsidized housing, she said.
Her game plan, she said, is to reach out to those families during the month of January, and she has already posted flyers at the town’s food pantry urging residents to reach out to her.
She acknowledges she’s facing some hurdles helping residents, notably the long wait times for subsidized housing and lack of housing in general – Henniker has two affordable housing units, one for seniors, one for families, and both are full. Moving people to other places is hard too, as communities tend to prioritize their own members when it comes to housing, she said.
“We’ll just have to do our best,” she said.
But Conforti-Adams said she can help in other ways, such as helping residents with job applications and resume writing. She also plans to work with GreenPath Financial Wellness, a nonprofit financial wellness organization, to help people work on their credit.
She definitely wants to see Rock ’n’ Birch residents take initiative, and sooner rather than later.
“Don’t fall into the role of the victim here,” she said. “Come see me, so we can get you help.”
Conforti-Adams said she hoped people understood the town was not trying to hurt the community, but were enforcing laws that dictate healthy and safe living. She noted that many residents must go to the bathhouse to shower, because they don’t have those facilities in their homes and it can be difficult for residents whose homes are run off propane to get someone out to refill it, especially in the winter.
“There’s good people out there – it’s a tight-knit community,” she said. “But they’re living there because they have nowhere else to go.”
(Caitlin Andrews can be reached at 369-3309, candrews@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @ActualCAndrews.)