Callum’s van is small, but he has a wood fire that he installed to keep him warm in the winter. “Most of us have one of these”, he says. “But I had to go back to London to stay with my parents for some of last winter because it was so cold.”
There are no refuse sites by the vans, so like most of the van dwellers, Callum drops his rubbish by the public bins which are a five-minute walk across the park. These are then collected by the council.
“I’ve tried so hard to get us proper bins,” he tells me. There are no toilets for van-dwellers to use in the park, and so many are forced to use the wooded areas on the Downs, while others have vans with built-in bathrooms and waste tanks.
There didn’t used to be much of a community here. Most kept themselves apart from their neighbours, but when the council began to tow away caravans, a WhatsApp group was created. “That has been quite good in terms of bonding,” Callum says. Now, the community tries to look out for each other’s vans.
Walking around the Downs, some vans have ‘Do Not Tow’ in the windows. Others are painted with brightly coloured flowers, while others have bicycles attached to their sides.
Rosie Scholes, 29, was reclining in her small campervan on the edge of the Downs when I happened to walk past. She doesn’t currently live in the park, but is hoping to move in the next few months. “I’d like to live on Parry’s Lane. I know that the council has evicted people but I think I will come anyway.”
Bristol has five official council-run van sites, with a capacity of 60, but, as everyone on the Downs knows, they have been full for a long time. Even if they weren’t, she would be apprehensive about moving there.
“I would be apprehensive about moving to the council-run sites. I would be nervous about living in such close proximity to people I don’t know, without the freedom that living on the side of the road gives you. I imagine socially it could be quite challenging, and I don’t trust that the Council would support people living there or maintain the sites well.”
Scholes is currently studying for a PhD at Reading University. She wants to move back to Bristol, where she lived for nine years, but the rent is unaffordable. “Even a room in a shared house is really expensive and I’m not of the age where I want to share any more. It’s also the stress of trying to find a nice place. There’s just so much competition.”
Instead of buying a house, she wants to buy a bigger van. “You can have your own space, You can move if you don’t like it and it doesn’t feel like a wasted investment either, like rent does when I’m just paying off someone else’s mortgage. If I invest money in the van up front, I know there will still be something left at the end.”
The van dwellers haven’t suddenly flocked to the Downs. Their numbers have been growing for years, as Bristol’s rents have risen. Over the past decade, private rents have increased by 52 per cent in the city, while wages have only risen by 24 per cent.
According to the ONS, the average price of a rental property in Bristol was £1,734 a month in February, making it the second-most expensive city in the UK after London. Median rents have also increased by 30 per cent in just three years.
