I was at the grocery store. We were in March 2022, I had not been mayor for five months. I was starting to live at a normal pace again. I suddenly heard on the radio the beginning of a government advertisement: “If you are in a flood zone…”. My heart suddenly contracted, I pushed back my cart and looked towards the exit saying to myself: “I have to go to the office”. For a split second, I was once again the mayor of a disaster-stricken city.
Soon enough, I came back down to earth. It was not up to me to act, someone else was in charge. There were no floods that year. I’m telling you this to illustrate that if I have experienced this kind of stress, when my house has always been dry, you have to imagine what the people whose house is threatened go through every year. Harsh for health.
I hear you from here saying that people should move, that taxpayers are tired of paying, that your capital of empathy is diminishing, that a lasting solution must be found. You’re right, but it’s not that simple. Here are some things to think about.
Yes, there are people who enjoy the river view and should do so at their own risk. But, far from the cliché of large cabins built illegally along the river, there are neighborhoods like Pointe-Gatineau, the most affected neighborhood in our area. Gatineau’s first European settler arrived there even before urban planning was invented. The neighborhood is in the middle of an urban area, most people cannot see the river. We even found 6,000-year-old Aboriginal sites there, which explains the logic of settling there.
In Gatineau and many other cities in Quebec, the true portrait of the majority of disaster victims is this. It is also the portrait of the victims of the future, because the climate will create new ones, in other equally urban districts.
That being said, the problem remains. What should be done ? Leave ?
The government has put in place a few measures to encourage people to move.
The first was an offer to pay $200,000 for a house and $50,000 for land to people who wanted to leave the flooded neighborhoods. The average value of a single-family home in Gatineau today is around $500,000. People don’t want to lose the biggest investment of their life. To date, only those whose homes are the least valuable or those who were worst off have left. Obviously, many of those who remain have had their homes immunized: with each new flood, we should lose less.
The second measure is the establishment of a limit to the government assistance that the disaster victims will receive, for life, for the same address. Even for an immunized house, a flood is expensive: material damage on the ground, temporary move, cleaning, etc. For the richest, it’s fine, as always. For others, it encourages them to leave, but slowly.
Results ?
Neighborhoods will survive thanks to those who can afford to live there. It is a fine example of climate change which accentuates social inequalities and which reduces social diversity in certain neighbourhoods.
Moreover, over time, there will be more and more holes in the neighborhoods. Some municipalities already have to maintain underground networks, clear snow, light, and pave streets where there are only two or three houses left.
The assistance program to encourage departures was in response to the floods: we are still waiting for the establishment of a permanent program. If the government really wants people to leave certain areas, this eventual program will have to cover the full value of the properties, otherwise people will not leave. Thanks to new mapping tools, we now know much better the areas and even the buildings at high risk. More targeted action is possible.
Durable solutions are complex and costly. Elsewhere in the world, municipalities immunize entire neighborhoods so that people can live there with peace of mind, or they plan their demolition, the removal of infrastructure and the development of sites to better accommodate floods.
Immunizing neighborhoods, investing massively to adapt our infrastructures to climate change, restoring natural environments and wetlands to give back space to water, buying houses at market price so that people can leave: these are vast projects that need to be taken forward. The costs of not doing so, for people first, but also for the state, are immense.