Van dwellers have armed themselves with axes and baseball bats after one of their caravans was destroyed in an apparent arson attack.
Tension has escalated between locals and the caravan crowd who have set up camp around one of Bristol’s beautiful parks.
The two-berth caravan parked in Saville Road went up like a fireball last Thursday night, melting the tarmac it stood on.
Locals living in one of the city’s most sought-after areas blame a faulty gas cylinder attached to the caravan.
But a stalwart of the caravan community said: ‘It was arson, it’s lucky no one was killed.
‘I have an axe and a baseball bat in my van and I’m not afraid to use it on anyone lurking late at night.
‘I’m not the only one who is afraid that we could be burned out of our homes.
‘If one of the houses around here got burned down you wouldn’t hear the end of it but because it’s a caravan no one cares.’
The city council has tried issuing eviction orders and even attempted to ban van dwellers from speaking to local residents in recent years.
Officially the number of homeless people living in vehicles in the city has risen by 400 per cent in the last five years, with 680 caravans and camper vans now pitched up on residential roads, but some fear the true figure is double that.
Many of the occupants spend their summers working at music festival sites across Britain, living ‘under the radar’.
In the winter months they pitch up in Bristol and hope to pick up casual jobs in restaurants, on-line warehouses and with the Royal Mail in the Christmas run-up.
One local told that the situation was already a ‘nightmare’ almost two years ago.
‘You can no longer let your children walk around in the street, even in daylight,’ the digital executive in his 30s said.
‘They have made people’s lives here an absolute misery and the sooner the council has moved every last one of them along, the better.
‘I do appreciate that some of them are here because of genuine hardship and I feel sorry for them. It’s complex, but I’d rather not have this outside my front door.’
But van dweller Dexter Shallcross, 24, slammed ‘high-level prejudice’ motivating attempts to disperse them.
‘They presume that rowdy behaviour, general drug use and disturbance must be the van people. I’m sure some cases are but not all of them,’ the University of the West of England sociology student said.
Van dweller ‘LJ’ said he used to earn £100,000 a year as a landscape gardener before Covid destroyed his business.
‘There’s a cost of living crisis raging out there but I can’t get a job or benefits because I don’t have an address,’ he said.
‘The system is set up to fail me, so what choice do I have other than to live like this?’
Last year the council stepped up pressure on the van dwellers with the installation of large planters along one of the worst impacted roads next to the city’s St George’s Park.
‘It is indicative of a drive to criminalise our lifestyle,’ said clerical assistant Gareth Jones.
‘As soon as anyone raises a fuss, there tends to be a clamp down. I am surprised the locals are as okay as they are with us being here.’
When Mail Online visited the site during the daytime his week almost all the camper vans and caravans were empty.
One dweller who works from home, a large converted truck, said: ‘They are all out at work, this isn’t about people scrounging on benefits.
‘If you are on the minimum wage or a zero hours contract this is a better alternative to living in a shared house at £1,000 a month.
‘A lot of people here work at music festivals in the summer and spend their winters on the roadsides of Bristol. It’s a lifestyle.’
The truck-dweller, 55, said his vehicle and other camper vans on the roadside around Clifton Downs were all taxed, insured and MOT’d.
He claimed most of the community, in their twenties and early thirties, were law-abiding and paid their taxes.
The well-spoken businessman, who runs an events company from his van, called on Bristol Council to act on the city’s growing housing problems before more caravans are set on fire.
He claims the council ‘waste’ up to £500,000 a year issuing caravan dwellers with eviction notices which won’t stand up in a court of law.
Clifton Downs still attracts its fair share of joggers and dog walkers but locals say the area has been ruined by its unwelcome visitors.
One woman walker, 66, said: ‘Two friends of mine saw a man emptying the contents of his caravan’s chemical toilet on the grass.
‘Another resident was spat at and the police traced the person who did it through his DNA although it never got to court.
‘This is a good area, with lovely houses, university halls of residence and beautiful park land. But it’s been ruined by people who live under the radar who don’t contribute to society or to Bristol.’
The charred chassis of the burnt out caravan was towed away on a low-loader one Tuesday afternoon, leaving a black scar on Saville Road.
Alan Tonkinson, 57, from the scrap firm charged with removing the remains, said: ‘If I had a pound for every abandoned and burned out caravan in Bristol. I’d be a rich man.
‘It’s a horrible job. The smell of human excrement and urine around some of the caravans is horrible. I have to wear rubber gloves and wash my clothes when I get home at night.
‘But there are more caravans arriving at different parts of Bristol all the time. It’s becoming a big problem.’