Permanent residents in caravan parks, managers and the persistence of the social.

ABSTRACT

Until recently, permanent residents in caravan parks were often absent from discussions about homelessness and housing in the Australian context. When permanent residency was recognised and legislated for in the 1980s, efforts were made to ensure scope for standard community infrastructure such as roads, sewerage and community gathering places. Although the number of long term caravan parks in Australia has recently decreased, on the edge of Melbourne some parks are expanding to cater for a growing clientele reflecting a new and partly de-institutionalised society. This society is characterised by mobile, temporary and casualised work and changing, volatile family relationships; each trend creating a need for different forms of housing. In this paper, preliminary interviews with ten caravan park managers from the outskirts of Melbourne reveal their role in the complex relationship between space, community formation and social solidarity: a relationship which directly impacts on the health and well-being of caravan park residents.

KEY WORDS

sociology, caravan parks; de-institutionalisation; permanent residents; housing; managers

Introduction

During the 1980s, Australia witnessed a relatively new social phenomenon in relation to caravan parks. Permanent residency within parks had established a foothold which could not be ignored, yet past regulations forbidding the practice were being circumvented by the moving of caravan wheels once every six weeks (Mueller and Collie 1980). For some, particularly the elderly in warmer beach locations (Bostock 2001), caravan park living was a lifestyle choice. For many, however, it was taken up as a cheap housing option when constraints prevented other alternatives. The constraints arose from neo-liberal policy changes, which reduced commitment to public housing, and to the inflated cost of private housing, leaving the poorest Australians with little hope of good housing (Paris 1993:40,43,173). Acknowlegement of the emerging problem resulted in a suite of reports being tabled (Dean 1981; Department of Community Welfare Services 1983; Planning Branch MMBW 1984; Management Research Group 1985; Office of Local Government 1987; Australian Institute of Urban Studies 1990; Victorian State Electricity Commission 1991; Wensing et al 2003). These recommended that while parks were not ideal forms of accommodation, in the absence of cheap alternatives, and in a climate of growing inequities, rising house prices and reduction in public housing, they should be treated as residential areas with associated rights to services. Local councils should register, and new standards should be applied to parks with ten permanent sites or 20% permanent residency. There were calls to separate permanent residents from holiday makers, and for the provision of equitable access to health (Bernard van Leer Foundation 1993), mail, social and transport services, group meetings and recreational facilities (Mueller and Collie 1980). Such recommendations were an attempt to ensure minimal standards in permanent resident sectors of caravan parks, to allow communal meetings and recreational gatherings, and to ensure access to basic play facilities for children.

There are a number of constraints which lead individuals to seek caravan park-living as an option for housing, and these relate to both work and family issues. Institutional complexes of work and family are bound closely to individual and social selves in contemporary life, and in our understandings of it. Kevin McDonald (1999), using Touraine's theory of social action, has suggested we have been undergoing a process of de-socialisation and de-institutionalisation in many areas, such as the fracturing and destabilisation of kinship ties, roles and responsibilities, and of expectations about full time work. Other scholars (e.g. Bauman 2001; Casey 1995) have noted the need for mobility in new and insecure global work contexts. Modern meanings of work have shifted, affecting patterns of self-formation and social solidarity (Casey 1995:25). Working life is 'saturated with uncertainty' and this uncertainty is 'a powerful individualising force', dividing rather than uniting people' (Bauman 2001:24). This uncertain and unstable work situation then, can be understood as leading to a furthering of the process of individualisation of the self. This is coupled with widespread challenges to the significance of the nuclear family, where, particularly since changes to the Family Law Act in the 1970s, it has become easier and more socially acceptable to exit marriage. Currently there has been a growth in lone-parent households, a decline in fertility, and a rise in the aged sector: demographic changes which directly impact on housing futures (Gleeson 1997:80,83). Preliminary reports on permanent residents in caravan parks reflect some of the destabilisation of familial roles, for, in some ways, communities of permanent residents in caravan parks exemplify extreme cases of processes affecting society as a whole. They also provide an illustration of significance of geography and 'space' understanding contemporary social relations (Giddens 1995; Gregory and Urry 1995).