Evicted or driven out by rent rises, people are turning to caravans as a cheap option. Some love the lifestyle – but for others, it is cold and unsafe

Jake Lee moved into a caravan two years ago and has never been happier. Before buying his static in Moray, Scotland, Lee was a Londoner. Fifteen years earlier, he’d taken out an interest-only mortgage – or, as he puts it, “one of these mortgages that shouldn’t have been given out”. “I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to pay the 100 grand I owed,” he says. Selling up would settle the debt – but leave him very little money to buy or rent elsewhere. Then he stumbled across the idea of living in a caravan park. “Having done it, it is the best thing I’ve ever done. Because living in these places is brilliant!”

It’s certainly more popular than it was: according to the Office for National Statistics, in 2021 there were 104,000 households living in caravans or other temporary structures in England and Wales – 19,000 more than a decade before.

Apart from helping his partner with her health food shop, Lee, 60, is all but retired and lives a relaxed lifestyle in the park. He says his home is warm, easy to repair and has everything you need to live comfortably. It’s roughly the size of a studio flat, with one bedroom, a kitchen, a living room and even a small garden. He owns the caravan but not the land it’s on, so he has to pay ground rent to the park’s owners, who provide water and waste collection in return.

He is not too worried that he could be forced to move if the land is sold. “There are laws to protect residents from the worst practices of unscrupulous companies, and the current owners here are decent. Being subject to ground rent is an issue, but it’s generally outweighed by the positives. I live relatively cheaply in a lovely area within a genuine community,” he says.

The park is quite diverse: Lee has thirtysomething neighbours on one side and ninetysomethings on the other. There are families, immaculately turned out couples, even a Little Lithuania: “This one Lithuanian family came in years ago, and they sort of gravitated around them. It’s brilliant.”

The caravan is cheaper to run than the three-bedroom home Lee moved out of. Still, if you want to save money, it helps if you have some already. His static set him back £40,000, but new caravans can be three times as expensive – and few banks will provide mortgages. “This is such a great option,” Lee says. “Councils should be falling over themselves to make this available.”

But not everyone ends up in a caravan by choice. Many have been driven there by austerity, the rising cost of living and a broken housing market.

Sheila and Sean McWilliam, 59 and 63, had spent 12 happy years in their home in Morpeth, Northumberland, when a no-fault eviction last May threw their lives into chaos. They had to find another place quickly, but local rents were astronomical and buying a home was out of the question. “Out of sheer desperation on the day of our eviction, we decanted into an old static caravan,” Sean says. Their meagre savings also paid for a small plot of farmland to put it on. They spent the best part of a year without basic amenities. “The stress is overwhelming,” Sean says. “My concerns daily are staying warm, fed, clean, earning money and trying to stay healthy.”

Sheila, who does most of the talking, is in bits as she lays out their struggles. “It was awful. No water, no electricity, no sewage, nothing. Sleeping in a dark caravan. We’re just not getting any help,” she says. Sean is also at his wits’ end: “I am sick of being pushed from pillar to post by a system that encourages using people’s homes as investments.”

Last June, the government issued a white paper for the renters’ reform bill, including a promise to abolish section 21 of the Housing Act, which allows landlords to toss their tenants to the kerb on a whim. Theresa May made the original pledge in the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto, since when the situation has worsened. The government’s own figures reveal that the number of private sector tenants evicted by bailiffs enforcing section 21 proceedings has increased by 143% in the last year.

The McWilliams became part of those statistics when their landlord decided he wanted to sell the house they were renting. This was their third no-fault eviction in 20 years. Now, with no registered address, they are unable to vote or even receive mail. “I’ve got to go to this delivery office in Morpeth every day,” says Sheila.

Sean is a builder and has been able to use his skills to provide basic plumbing, so they no longer have to live off bottled water and shlep their laundry to the launderette every other day like they did in the beginning. Still, things are far from perfect. All they have for heating is a tiny wood burner. “When you go to bed at night, it just goes out, and then you’re waking up to minus two in the caravan,” says Sean.

They are also fighting Morpeth council, which issued them an enforcement notice to remove their caravan because they had no planning permission to have it on their land. “We are appealing without legal help,” says Sean.

What about support from their community? “Just the opposite,” he says.

“Because they’re all very middle class, upper middle class,” Sheila adds. “They’re not all bad, but those ones that do support us don’t want to put their heads above the parapet.”

“They don’t want to go against the neighbours, I suppose,” Sean suggests.

Even renting a static can have its problems, as Zoe (not her real name) discovered last September. Renting a room in Edinburgh was leaving her little spending money, so she began looking for alternatives. The pandemic had already shown her that she could work remotely – and she loved the Scottish Highlands. “I found a static caravan advertised on Gumtree, and the landlord agreed to rent it to me for £320 per month,” she says. “There is no way I could have found anywhere that would welcome me and my pets [two guinea pigs] for near that price elsewhere in Edinburgh.”

But there were strings, as she quickly discovered. She was given no rental contract, and her landlord refused to pay for safety checks. “So I forked out on electrical safety tests and fire extinguishers, on the understanding that I would be able to stay there long-term and the low rent would make up for it in the long run.”

It didn’t end there. When Zoe moved in, her landlord said that utilities would cost her £40 a month. Soon afterwards, he tripled the bill without providing any evidence to justify the rise. Zoe emailed her local council for help, but they told her that caravans “don’t fall under our remit”. “These rogue landlords are exploiting people needing somewhere inexpensive to live and slipping through the net of accountability,” says Zoe.

There were also problems with the static itself. It was poorly insulated and freezing cold. When winter came, ice would block the toilet and cover the window ledges, and black and green mould grew in her bedroom and bathroom.

Even so, Zoe loved it. “The weather challenges kept me in the moment and made me feel alive, and the starry nights were spectacular, along with the deer bouncing around outside as the winter sun rose.”

The dream ended in January when her boiler exploded while she was visiting family in the north-west of England. The landlord sent her a text informing her of the situation. “No warning, nothing – just told me I had to get out.” She is now back renting another box room elsewhere in Scotland, but she’s not completely put off by the idea of caravan life.

The McWilliams, meanwhile, are still fighting to cling on to their static. “What’s the choice?” says Sean. “We’ll have to see this through.” Sheila, through her tears, says they’re not asking for much. “It’s not like we’re fighting to get the council to give us a house. We’re fighting for the right to provide ourselves with a home, given that we’ve been pulled out of ours on numerous occasions.”

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