Seasonal housing is difficult to come by in Skagway during typically busy summer seasons. For some in 2019, the last busy season before COVID, it made sense to stay in an RV or camper at a municipal RV park as there was a scarcity of rooms to rent. 

One such person is Matt Summers, a local tour company operator.

“There were people sleeping on the streets, in 2019. Trailers at the RV park provided a gap solution to some of the housing shortage,” said Summers.

Some chose to store their RV’s in the park before leaving at the end of the season. The municipality allowed them to continue that storage through 2020. But moving forward, that may not be an option. 

The company that manages the Garden City RV Park in Skagway started calling seasonal residents around mid-April.  The message was clear, if you plan on living in your RV this summer you’ll need to occupy it by May 15th.  If you do not plan on occupying your RV this summer, you have until May 15th to remove it.

Additionally, the renters were told, if you plan on living in it this summer, you’ll still have to vacate the park by mid-October as the park will no longer host long-term seasonal campers in 2022, nor will they offer wintertime storage rates.

Summers says this may be the final straw, after two seasons of no income due to COVID-19, that forces him to shutter his tour company permanently.

“It was a little disconcerting to hear that they suddenly decided to remove the seasonal residence option from Garden City that pretty much puts me out of luck for housing, and for the potential of having a business for 2022.  I’m just a renter, not a landowner, and that pretty much sealed the deal for me to go out of business,” said Summers.

The municipality had allowed RV’s to hook up at residences for the last three years south of 15th street, but that’s no longer an option. With Garden City RV ending its accommodations for seasonal residents, they may be out of options for places to hook up their RV’s in town.

According to Borough Manager Brad Ryan, the municipality offered a waiver last summer to the seasonal residents of Garden City RV park that allowed them to store their RV’s and Campers for the remainder of the 2020 season at the winter storage fee rate. That waiver is no longer in place.  

“Last year, for example, we didn’t make people come back and occupy their trailer, which is a requirement during the summertime. This year, we’re saying that you have to come back and occupy your trailer or you have to move your trailer. We allowed storage during the summer last year, which we don’t normally do. In the wintertime, we do have a storage fee and rate but during the summer you couldn’t store it, you had to be in it,” said Ryan.

Ryan says that the municipality is planning to make improvements to the Garden City RV Park and that doing the improvements this summer with limited RV traffic, would displace the least amount of people. 

Skagway Mayor Andrew Cremata acknowledges the complexity of the situation.  He says if the Canadian Border opens and RV traffic can finally come into Skagway, they will certainly need a place to camp. While at the same time, he doesn’t want to overburden small business owners who already have a massive loss of revenue to deal with.

“I know that the manager is working on trying to figure out a solution to this problem to make sure that these trailers have a place, have a home and that it’s not going to be some kind of outrageous expense for the people on there. I personally believe, because I know I believe it, and I believe everybody on the assembly would agree with this, we don’t want to lose business owners and we don’t want to lose seasonal residents, who I consider to be locals just as much as anybody else, because they no longer have a place to live,” said Cremata.

According to Manager Ryan, approximately 15 people currently have RV’s or Campers in Garden City RV Park, and about five of those have stated that they plan on occupying them for the summer season of 2021.  

There will be a finance meeting on May 5th and an Assembly meeting on May 6th where this issue will be discussed further by the Municipality.