Recently, I walked past a building in front of which the possessions of several families were piled up in a desperate heap – furniture, toys, mattresses – devastated by the flood that had occurred two weeks earlier.
I looked at these sad remains and felt an immense sorrow for these people whose lives had just been turned upside down in a few agonizing minutes. My empathy for these victims is total. Even though I have never suffered this damage, I dread every tropical downpour that hits Montreal, every raging storm. AccuWeather has become my go-to app.
Whether you are a tenant or an owner, poor or well-off, even far from a watercourse, we are now all at risk of a sewer backup or a flash flood. Once a place of conviviality, the basement is becoming the most anxiety-provoking place in the house. I stare at the ground and fear that the sky will fall into my cellar.
Basements were quickly identified by construction specialists. They are a recent invention. The old two-hundred-year-old houses only have a crawl space, like many townhouses, plexes, in Saint-Henri, in Centre-Sud, on the Plateau.
I thought for a long time that the basement was dug to insulate us from the cold: not at all! It was born with the split-levels and bungalows, on the outskirts of cities, in the 1950s. It allowed an extra level, in depth. The basement quickly became a refuge for children, teenagers dreamed of having their own bedroom there. It is associated with the happy nuclear family, with the luxury of space. Now, all houses have a basement. It is a conquest of the North American lifestyle and the middle class (all things that are not popular at the moment).
My basement concerns will be decried by some as petty bourgeois. Because if I have a cellar, it’s because I have a house, which is moreover, in my case, a single-family home. Nothing ostentatious, this is not Rosemont! A good old house from the 1950s, built at the time under the impetus of the Catholic Workers’ League. But recently, I feel ostracized, because I live in the new unloved of the housing stock: the single-family home. I am Real estate challenged.
Too big for few inhabitants. With a courtyard? Disproportionate ecological footprint in the midst of a climate crisis. The surface area occupied is nevertheless modest when compared to that of “monster houses” suburban, but self-proclaimed commissioners of urban correctness have spoken: this type of dwelling should now be banned. For the common good, densify, build high and, above all, punish the infamous who cling to their cottage. A smell of morality and architectural hygiene floats above the neighborhoods…
There have been inconsistencies on the part of real estate developers for which we are paying the collective price. The 750-square-foot one-bedroom condos that turn out to be bloodless as soon as a family project comes along. The scarcity of large three- or four-bedroom apartments.
On the other hand, we have seen entire neighborhoods of houses of indecent dimensions spring up, in subdivisions that are anything but friendly, where all-cars are the norm. We have let this happen. Worse, we are repeating it in the midst of the housing crisis.
It is true that we will have to seriously revisit our way of building and living. We will have to consider the smallest, the densest, the one without basement, for reasons of pressing environmental crisis. But also because it is more interesting to densify than to disperse housing in order to offer better services, amenities, local shops, public transportation. The “soft density” of the University District of Calgary is eloquent on this point.1.
It is necessary to densify to a certain point, however, I spoke about it here a few weeks ago2. Our organization of space is North American, our imagination is accustomed to the vast, the airy, to what breathes. Our occupation of the territory can and MUST be improved, thought out, but by respecting our identity. We are not Paris or Copenhagen. We have space and appreciate it.
The way of settling speaks of urban planning, construction, living together. But it also touches an extremely sensitive fiber. Modest accommodation or manor, our homes are not doorsas suggested by the Minister responsible for Housing, France-Élaine Duranceau, stripping down to bureaucratic abstraction the fact of having placed our lives under a roof. We call it a HOUSE. A home. It is the heart of our lives.
It’s much more than a postcode. That’s why we have to campaign so that everyone can have decent housing, that we have to take the housing crisis as an opportunity, an opportunity to be forward-looking and imaginative.
It is not for nothing that Fanny Britt has masterfully explored the inner refuge that lies behind closed doors in The housesnor that Paul Auster makes the decrepit house of his alter ego a quasi-character in his formidable last novel, Baumgartner.
Houses are becoming suspect. Wanting to ban a type of housing is not the best way to challenge neoliberalism, any more than building towers in para-agricultural suburbs.
Let us advocate sensitivity rather than ideology. Because the house, no matter its form, makes the human who lives there.
1. Read the file “Calgary in densification mode” by Émilie Côté
2. Read the column “Verticalities”
What do you think? Join the dialogue